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THE
DORE LECTURES
ON MENTAL SCIENCE
By THOMAS TROWARD
$2.75
THE
DORE LECTURES
ON MENTAL SCIENCE
By Thomas Troward
The addresses contained in this volume
were delivered by Judge Troward at the
Dot6 Gallery, London; hence their title,
"The Dor6 Lectures." This book was
warmly commended in a discourse at West-
minster Abbey by Archdeacon Wilber-
force, who advised his hearers to read the
work. The chapters are: "Entering into the
Spirit of It," "Individuality," "The New
Thought and the New Order," "The Life
of the Spirit," "Alpha and Omega," "The
Creative Power of Thought," "The Great
Affirmative," "Christ the Fulfilling of the
Law," "The Story of Eden," "The Wor-
ship of Ishi," "The Shepherd and the
Stone," "Salvation Is of the Jews."
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
THE DORE LECTURES
Thi« on
82W6-C9X-9HU5
BOOKS BY THOMAS TROWARD
Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
The Creative Process in the Individual
The Dore Lectures
The Edinburgh Lectures
The Law and the Word
The Hidden Power
THE
DORE LECTURES
Being Sunday Addresses at the Dore
Gallery, London, Given in Connection
with the Higher Thought Centre, lo,
Cheniston Gardens, Kensington.
by Thomas Troward
Fides et Amor Veritas et Robtir
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT. 1909
BT THOMAS TROWABB
Published, September, 1900
TwerUy-fifih Printing
THE DORE LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS.
PAOS
Entering into thb Spirit of it z
Individuality lo
The New Thought and the New Order . • .ax
The Life of the Spirit 31
Alpha and Omega 41
The Creative Power of Thought 50
The Great Affirmative 56
Christ the Fulfilling of the Law .... 63
The Story of Eden 73
The Worship of Ishi 83
The Shepherd and the Stone 93
Salvation is of the Jews xoa
FOREWORD.
The addresses contained in this volume were de-
livered by me at the Dore Gallery, Bond Street,
London, on the Sundays of the first three months
of the present year, and are now published at the
kind request of many of my hearers, hence their
title of " The Dore Lectures." A number of
separate discourses on a variety of subjects neces-
sarily labours under the disadvantage of want of
continuity, and also under that of a liability to the
frequent repetition of similar ideas and expressions,
and the reader will, I trust, pardon these defects as
inherent in the circumstances of the work. At the
same time it will be found that, although not spe-
cially so designed, there is a certain progressive de-
velopment of thought through the dozen lectures
which compose this volume, the reason for which
is that they all aim at expressing the same funda-
mental idea, namely that, though the laws of the
universe can never be broken, they can be made to
work under special conditions which will produce
results that could not be produced under the con-
ditions spontaneously provided by nature. This is
a simple scientific principle and it shows us the
place which is occupied by the personal factor, that,
vi Foreword.
namely, of an intelligence which sees beyond the
present limited manifestation of the Law into its
real essence, and which thus constitutes the instru-
mentality by which the infinite possibilities of the
Law can be evoked into forms of power, usefulness,
and beauty.
The more perfect, therefore, the working of the
personal factor, the greater will be the results de-
veloped from the Universal Law; and hence our
lines of study should be two-fold— on the one hand
the theoretical study of the action of Universal
Law, and on the other the practical fitting of our-
selves to make use of it ; and if the present volume
should assist any reader in this two-fold quest, it
will have answered its purpose.
The different subjects have necessarily been
treated very briefly, and the addresses can only be
considered as suggestions for lines of thought which
the reader will be able to work out for himself, and
he must therefore not expect that careful elabora-
tion of detail which I would gladly have bestowed
had I been writing on one of these subjects exclu-
sively. This little book must be taken only for
what it is, the record of somewhat fragmentary talks
with a very indulgent audience, to whom I grate-
fully dedicate the volume.
T.T.
JUNB 5, 1909.
mtmm
THE DORE LECTURES
ENTERING INTO THE SPIRIT OF IT.
We all know the meaning of this phrase in our
everyday life. The Spirit is that which gives life
and movement to anything, in fact it is that which
causes it to exist at all. The thought of the author,
the impression of the painter, the feeling of the
musician, is that without which their works could
never have come into being, and so it is only as we
enter into the idea which gives rise to the work, that
we can derive all the enjoyment and benefit from it
which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter into
the Spirit of it, the book, the picture, the music, are
meaningless to us: to appreciate them we must
share the mental attitude of their creator. This is
a universal principle; if we do not enter into the
Spirit of a thing, it is dead so far as we are con-
cerned; but if we do enter into it we reproduce in
ourselves the same quality of life which called that
thing into existence.
Now if this is a general principle, why can we
not carry it to a higher range of things? Why not
to the highest point of all? May we not enter into
the originating Spirit of Life itself, and so reproduce
2 The Dori Lectures.
it in ourselves as a perennial spring of Hvingness?
This, surely, is a question worthy of our careful
consideration.
The spirit of a thing is that which is the source
of its inherent movement, and therefore the ques-
tion before us is, what is the nature of the primal
moving power, which is at the back of the endless
array of life which we see around us, our own life
included? Science gives us ample ground for say-
ing that it is not material, for science has now, at
least theoretically, reduced all material things to a
primary ether, universally distributed, whose innu-
merable particles are in absolute equilibrium;
whence it follows on mathematical grounds alone
that the initial movement which began to concen-
trate the world and all material substances out of
the particles of the dispersed ether, could not have
originated in the particles themselves. Thus by a
necessary deduction from the conclusions of physi-
cal science, we are compelled to realize the pres-
ence of some immaterial power capable of separat-
ing off certain specific areas for the display of
cosmic activity, and then building up a material
universe with all its inhabitants by an orderly se-
quence of evolution, in which each stage lays the
foundation for the development of the stage, which
is to follow — ^in a word we find ourselves brought
face to face with a power which exhibits on a stu-
Entering into the Spirit of it. 3
pendous scale, the faculties of selection and adapta*
tion of means to ends, and thus distributes energy
and life in accordance with a recognizable scheme
of cosmic progression. It is therefore not only Life,
but also Intelligence, and Life guided by Intelli*
gence becomes Volition. It is this primary origin-
ating power which we mean when we speak of " The
Spirit," and it is into this Spirit of the whole uni-
verse that we must enter if we would reproduce it
as a spring of Original Life in ourselves.
Now in the case of the productions of artistic
genius we know that we must enter into the move-
ment of the creative mind of the artist, before we
can realize the principle which gives rise to his
work. We must learn to partake of the feeling, to
find expression for which is the motive of his crea-
tive activity. May we not apply the same principle
to the Greater Creative Mind with which we are
seeking to deal? There is something in the work
of the artist which is akin to that of original crea-
tion. His work, literary, musical, or graphic is
original creation on a miniature scale, and in this it
differs from that of the engineer, which is construc-
tive, or that of the scientist which is analytical; for
the artist in a sense creates something out of
nothing, and therefore starts from the stand-point
of simple feeling, and not from that of a pre-existing
necessity. This, by the hypothesis of the case, is
4 The DorS Lectures.
true also of the Parent Mind, for at the stage where
the initial movement of creation takes place, there
are no existing conditions to compel action in one
direction more than another. Consequently the
direction taken by the creative impulse is not dic-
tated by outward circumstances, and the primary
movement must therefore be entirely due to the
action of the Original Mind upon itself; it is the
reaching out of this Mind for realization of all that
it feels itself to be.
The creative process thus in the first instance is
purely a matter of feeling — exactly what we speak
of as " motif " in a work of art.
Now it is this original feeling that we need to
enter into, because it is the fons et origo of the
whole chain of causation which subsequently fol-
lows. What then can this original feeling of the
Spirit be? Since the Spirit is Life-in-itself, its feel-
ing can only be for the fuller expression of Life —
any other sort of feeling would be self-destructive
and is therefore inconceivable. Then the full ex-
pression of Life implies Happiness, and Happiness
implies Harmony, and Harmony implies Order, and
Order implies Proportion, and Proportion implies
Beauty; so that in recognizing the inherent ten-
dency of the Spirit towards the production of Life,
we can recognise a similar inherent tendency to the
production of these other qualities also; and since
Entering into the Spirit of it. 5
the desire to bestow the greater fulness of joyous
life can only be described as Love, we can sum up
the whole of the feeling which is the original mov-
ing impulse in the Spirit as Love and Beauty — ^the
Spirit finding expression through forms of beauty in
centres of life, in harmonious reciprocal relation
to itself. This is a generalized statement of the
broad principle by which Spirit expands from the
innermost to the outermost, in accordance with a
Law of tendency inherent in itself.
It sees itself, as it were, reflected in various
centres of life and energy, each with its appropriate
form; but in the first instance these reflections can
have no existence except within the originating
Mind. They have their first beginning as mental
images, so that in addition to the powers of Intelli-
gence and Selection, we must also realise that of
Imagination as belonging to the Divine Mind; and
we must picture these powers as working from the
initial motive of Love and Beauty.
Now this is the Spirit that we need to enter into,
and the method o{> doing so is a perfectly logical
one. It is the sair.e method by which all scientific
advance is made. It consists in first observing how
a certain law works under the conditions spontan-
eously provided by nature, next in carefully
considering what principle this spontaneous work-
ing indicates, and lastly deducing from this how the
6 The Dori Lectures.
same principle would act under specially selected
conditions, not spontaneously provided by nature.
The progress of shipbuilding affords a good ex-
ample of what I mean. Formerly wood was em-
ployed instead of iron, because wood floats in water
and iron sinks; yet now the navies of the world are
built of iron; careful thought showed the law of
floatation to be that anything could float which,
bulk for bulk, is lighter than the mass of liquid dis-
placed by it; and so we now make iron float by the
very same law by which it sinks, because by the
introduction of the personal factor, we provide con-
ditions which do not occur spontaneously — ^accord-
ing to the esoteric maxim that " Nature unaided
fails." Now we want to apply the same process of
specializing a generic Law to the first of all Laws,
that of the generic life-giving tendency of Spirit it-
self. Without the element of individtial personality
the Spirit can only work cosmically by a generic
Law; but this law admits of far higher specializa-
tion, and this specialization can only be attained
through the introduction of the personal factor.
But to introduce this factor the individual must be
fully aware of the principle which underlies the
spontaneous or cosmic action of the law. Where,
then, will he find this principle of Life? Certainly
not by contemplating Death. In order to get a
principle to work in the way we require it to, we
Entering into the Spirit of it. 7
must observe its action when it is working spon-
taneously in this particular direction. We must
ask why it goes in the right direction as far as it
does — ^and having learnt this we shall then be able
to make it go further. The law of floatation was
not discovered by contemplating the sinking of
things, but by contemplating the floating of things
which floated naturally, and then intelligently ask-
ing why they did so.
The knowledge of a principle is to be gained by
the study of its affirmative action; when we under-
stand that we are in a position to correct the nega-
tive conditions which tend to prevent that action.
Now Death is the absence of Life, and disease is
the absence of health, so to enter into the Spirit of
Life we require to contemplate it, where it is to be
found, and not where it is not — we are met with the
old question, " Why seek ye the living among the
dead? " This is why we start our studies by con-
sidering the cosmic creation, for it is there that we
find the Life Spirit working through untold ages,
not merely as deathless energy, but with a perpet-
ual advance into higher degrees of Life. If we
could only so enter into the Spirit as to make it
personally in ourselves what it evidently is in itself,
the magnum opus would be accomplished. This
means realizing our life as drawn direct from the
Originating Spirit; and if we now understand that
8 The Dori Lectures.
the Thought or Imagination of the Spirit is the
great reality of Being, and that all material facts
are only correspondences, then it logically follows
that what we have to do is to maintain our individ-
ual place in the Thought of the Parent Mind.
We have seen that the action of the Originating
Mind must needs be generic, that is according to
types which include multitudes of individuals. This
type is the reflection of the Creative Mind at the
level of that particular genius; and at the human
level it is Man, not as associated with particular
circumstances, but as existing in the absolute ideal.
In proportion then as we learn to dissociate our
conception of ourselves from particular circum-
stances, and to rest upon our absolute nature, as
reflections of the Divine ideal, we, in our turn,
reflect back into the Divine Imagination its original
conception of itself as expressed in generic or typ-
ical Man, and so by a natural law of cause and
effect, the individual who realizes this mental atti-
tude enters permanently into the Spirit of Life, and
it becomes a perennial fountain of Life springing up
spontaneously within him.
He then finds himself to be as the Bible says,
" the image and likeness of God." He has reached
the level at which he affords a new starting point
for the creative process, and the Spirit, finding a
personal centre in him, begins its work de novo,
Entering into the Spirit of it, 9
having thus solved the great problem of how to
enable the Universal to act directly upon the plane
of the Particular.
It IS in this sense, as affording the requisite centre
for a new departure of the creative Spirit, that man
is said to be a " microcosm," or universe in minia-
ture; and this is also what is meant by the esoteric
doctrine of the Octave, of which I may be able to
speak more fully on some other occasion.
If the principles here stated are carefully con-
sidered, they will be found to throw light on much
that would otherwise be obscure, and they will also
afford the key to the succeeding essays.
The reader is therefore asked to think them out
carefully for himself, and to note their connection
with the subject of the next article.
INDIVIDUALITY.
Individuality is the necessary complement of
the Universal Spirit, which was the subject of our
consideration last Sunday. The whole problem of
life consists in finding the true relation of the indi-
vidual to the Universal Originating Spirit; and the
first step towards ascertaining this is to realize what
the Universal Spirit must be in itself. We have
already done this to some extent, and the conclu-
sions we have arrived at are: —
That the essence of the Spirit is Life, Love,
and Beauty.
That its Motive, or primary moving impulse,
is to express the Life, Love and Beauty which
it feels itself to be.
That the Universal cannot act on the plane
of the Particular except by becoming the par-
ticular, that is by expression through the indi-
vidual.
If these three axioms are clearly grasped, we
have got a solid foundation from which to start our
consideration of the subject for to-day.
The first question that naturally presents itself is,
xo
Individuality. ix'
If these things be so, why does not every individual
express the life, love, and beauty of the Universal
Spirit? The answer to this question is to be found
in the Law of Consciousness. We cannot be con-
scious of anything except by realizing a certain
relation between it and ourselves. It must affect us
in some way, otherwise we are not conscious of its
existence; and according to the way in which it
affects us we recognize ourselves as standing related
to it. It is this self-recognition on our own part
carried out to the sum total of all our relations,
whether spiritual, intellectual, or physical, that
constitutes our realization of life. On this prin-
ciple, then, for the realization of its own Livingness,
the production of centres of life, through its relation
to which this conscious realization can be attained,
becomes a necessity for the Originating Mind.
Then it follows that this realization can only be
complete where the individual has perfect liberty to
withhold it; for otherwise no true realization could
have taken place. For instance, let us consider the
working of Love. Love must be spontaneous, or
it has no existence at all. We cannot imagine such
a thing as mechanically induced love. But anything
which is formed so as to automatically produce an
effect without any volition of its own, is nothing
but a piece of mechanism. Hence if the Originat-
ing Mind is to realize the reality of Love, it can
12 The DorS Lectures.
only be by relation to some being which has the
power to withhold love. The same applies to the
realization of all the other modes of livingness; so
that it is only in proportion, as the individual life is
an independent centre of action, with the option of
acting either positively or negatively, that any real
life has been produced at all. The further the
created thing is from being a merely mechanical
arrangement, the higher is the grade of creation.
The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical
creation, but to constitute centres which can recip-
rocate the highest nature of the Divine Mind, re-
quires not a mechanism, however perfect, but a men-
tal centre which is, in itself, an independent source
of action. Hence by the requirements of the case
man should be capable of placing himself either in
a positive or a negative relation to the Parent
Mind, from which he originates ; otherwise he would
be nothing more than a clockwork figure.
In this necessity of the case, then, we find the
reason why the life, love, and beauty of the Spirit
are not visibly reproduced in every human being.
They are reproduced in the world of nature, so far
as a mechanical and automatic action can represent
them, but their perfect reproduction can only take
place on the basis of a liberty akin to that of the
Originating Spirit itself, which therefore implies the
liberty of negation as well as of affirmation.
Individuality. 13
Why, then, does the individual make a negative
choice? Because he does not understand the law
of his own individuality, and believes it to be a law
of limitation, instead of a Law of Liberty. He
does not expect to find the starting point of the
Creative Process reproduced within himself, and so
he looks to the mechanical side of things for the
basis of his reasoning about life. Consequently his
reasoning lands him in the conclusion that life is
limited, because he has assumed limitation in his
premises, and so logically cannot escape from it in
his conclusion. Then he thinks that this is the law
and so ridicules the idea of transcending it. He
points to the sequence of cause and effect, by which
death, disease, and disaster, hold their sway over
the individual, and says that sequence is law. And
he is perfectly right so far as he goes — ^it is a law;
but not the Law. When we have only reached this
stage of comprehension, we have yet to learn that
a higher law can include a lower one so completely
as entirely to swallow it up.
The fallacy involved in this negative argument,
is the assumption that the law of limitation is essen-
tial in all grades of being. It is the fallacy of the
old shipbuilders as to the impossibility of building
iron ships. What is required is to get at the prin--
ciple which is at the back of the Law in its affirma-
tive working, and specialize it under higher con-
14 The DorS Lectures.
ditions than are spontaneously presented by nature,
and this can only be done by the introduction of the
personal element, that is to say an individual intel-
ligence capable of comprehending the principle.
The question, then, is, what is the principle by
which we came into being? and this is only a per-
sonal application of the general question. How did
anything come into being? Now, as I pointed out
in the preceding article, the ultimate deduction from
physical science is that the originating movement
takes place in the Universal Mind, and is analogous
to that of our own imagination; and as we have just
seen, the perfect ideal can only be that of a being
capable of reciprocating all the qualities of the Or-
iginating Mind. Consequently man, in his inmost
nature, is the product of the Divine Mind imaging
forth an image of itself on the plane of the relative
as the complementary to its own sphere of the ab-
solute.
If we will therefore go to the inmost principle in
ourselves, which philosophy and Scripture alike
declare to be made in the image and likeness of
God, instead of to the outer vehicles which it exter-
nalizes as instruments through which to function on
the various planes of being, we shall find that we
have reached a principle in ourselves which stands
in loco dei towards all our vehicles and also towards
our environment. It is above them all, and creates
Individuality. 15
them, however unaware we may be of the fact, and
relatively to them it occupies the place of first cause.
The recognition of this is the discovery of our own
relation to the whole world of the relative. On the
other hand this must not lead us into the mistake of
supposing that there is nothing higher, for, as we
have already seen, this inmost principle or ego is
itself the effect of an antecedent cause, for it pro-
ceeds from the imaging process in the Divine Mind.
We thus find ourselves holding an intermediate
position between true First Cause, on the one hand,
and the world of secondary causes on the other, and
in order to understand the nature of this position,
we must fall back on the axiom that the Universal
can only work on the plane of the Particular
through the individual. Then we see that the func-
tion of the individual is to differentiate the undis-
tributed flow of the Universal into suitable direc-
tions for starting different trains of secondary caus-
ation.
Man's place in the cosmic order is that of a dis-
tributor of the Divine power, subject, however, to
the inherent Law of the power which he distributes.
We see one instance of this in ordinary science, in
the fact that we never create force; all we can do is
to distribute it. The very word Man means dis-
tributor or measurer, as in common with all words
derived from the Sanderit root MN., it implies the
i6 The Dori Lectures.
idea of measurement, just as in the words moon,
month, mens, mind, and " man," the Indian weight
of 8olbs. ; and it is for this reason that man is spoken
of in Scripture as a " steward," or dispenser of the
Divine gifts. As our minds become open to the
full meaning of this position, the immense possibil-
ities and also the responsibility contained in it will
become apparent.
It means that the individual is the creative centre
of his own world. Our past experience affords no
evidence against this, but on the contrary, is evi-
dence for it. Our true nature is always present,
only we have hitherto taken the lower and mechan-
ical side of things for our starting point, and so
have created limitation instead of expansion. And
even with the knowledge of the Creative Law which
we have now attained, we shall continue to do
this, if we seek our starting point in the things
which are below us and not in the only thing which
is above us, namely the Divine Mind, because it is
only there that we can find illimitable Creative
Power. Life is being, it is the experience of states
of consciousness, and there is an unfailing corre-
spondence between these inner states and our out-
ward conditions. Now we see from the Original
Creation that the state of consciousness must be
the cause, and the corresponding conditions the ef-
fect, because at the starting of the creation no con-
Individuality. 1 7
ditions existed, and the working of the Creative
Mind upon itself can only have been a state of con-
sciousness. This, then, is clearly the Creative
Order — from states to conditions. But we invert
this order, and seek to create from conditions to
states. We say. If I had such and such conditions
they would produce the state of feeling which I
desire; and in so saying we run the risk of making
a mistake as to the correspondence, for it may turn
out that the particular conditions which we fixed on
are not such as would produce the desired state.
Or, again, though they might produce it in a cer-
tain degree, other conditions might produce it in a
still greater degree, while at the same time opening
the way to the attainment of still higher states and
still better conditions. Therefore our wisest plan
is to follow the pattern of the Parent Mind and
make mental self-recognition our starting point,
knowing that by the inherent Law of Spirit the
corelated conditions will come by a natural process
of growth. Then the great self-recognition is that
of our relation to the Supreme Mind. That is the
generating centre and we are distributing centres;
just as electricity is generated at the central station
and delivered in different forms of power by reason
of passing through appropriate centres of distribu*
tion, so that in one place it lights a room, in an-
other conveys a message, and in a third drives a
1 8 The DorS Lectures.
tram car. In like manner the power of the Univer-
sal Mind takes particular forms through the par-
ticular mind of the individual. It does not inter-
fere with the lines of his individuality, but works
along them, thus making him, not less, but more
himself. It is thus, not a compelling power, but
an expanding and illuminating one; so that the more
the individual recognizes the reciprocal action be-
tween it and himself, the more full of life he must
become.
Then also we need not be troubled about future
conditions because we know that the All-originating
Power is working through us and for us, and that
according to the Law proved by the whole existing
creation, it produces all the conditions required for
the expression of the Life, Love and Beauty which
it is, so that we can fully trust it to open the way as
we go along. The Great Teacher's words, " Take
no thought for the morrow " — ^and note that the
correct translation is " Take no anxious thought " —
are the practical application of the soundest phil-
osophy. This does not, of course, mean that we
are not to exert ourselves. We must do our share
in the work, and not expect God to do for us what
He can only do through us. We are to use our
common sense and natural faculties in working
upon the conditions now present. We must make
use of them, as far as they go, but we must not try
Individuality. 19
and go further than the present things require; we
must not try to force things, but allow them to
grow naturally, knowing that they are doing so
under the guidance of the All-Creating Wisdom.
Following this method we shall grow more and
more into the habit of looking to mental attitude as
the Key to our progress in Life, knowing that
everything else must come out of that ; and we shall
further discover that our mental attitude is eventu-
ally determined by the way in which we regard the
Divine Mind. Then the final result will be that
we shall see the Divine Mind to be nothing else
than Life, Love and Beauty — Beauty being identi-
cal with Wisdom or the perfect adjustment of parts
to whole — and we shall see ourselves to be dis-
tributing centres of these primary energies and so
in our turn subordinate centres of creative power.
And as we advance in this knowledge we shall find
that we transcend one law of limitation after an-
other by finding the higher law, of which the lower
is but a partial expression, until we shall see clearly
before us, as our ultimate goal, nothing less than
the Perfect Law of Liberty — not liberty without
Law which is anarchy, but Liberty according to
Law. In this way we shall find that the Apostle
spoke the literal truth, when he said, that we shall
become like Him when we see Him as He is, be-
cause the whole process by which our individuality
20 The Dori Lectures.
IS produced is one of reflection of the image exist-
ing in the Divine Mind. When we thus learn the
Law of our own being we shall be able to special-
ize it in ways of which we have hitherto but little
conception, but as in the case of all natural laws
the specialization cannot take place until the funda-
mental principle of the generic law has been fully
realized. For these reasons the student should en-
deavour to realize more and more perfectly, both in
theory and practice, the law of the relation between
the Universal and the Individual Minds. It is that
of reciprocal action. If this fact of reciprocity is
grasped, it will be found to explain both why the
individual falls short of expressing the fulness of
Life, which the Spirit is, and why he can attain to
the fulness of that expression; just as the same law
explains why iron sinks in water, and how it can
be made to float. It is the individualizing of the
Universal Spirit, by recognizing its reciprocity to
ourselves, that is the secret of the perpetuation and
growth of our own individuality.
THE NEW THOUGHT AND THE NEW
ORDER.
In the two preceding lectures I have endeavoured
to reach some conception of what the All-originat-
ing Spirit is in itself, and of the relation of the in-
dividual to it. So far as we can form any concep-
tion of these things at all we see that they are uni-
versal principles applicable to all nature, and, at the
human level, applicable to all men: they are general
laws the recognition of which is an essential pre-
liminary to any further advance, because progress
is made, not by setting aside the inherent law of
things, which is impossible, but by specializing it
through presenting conditions which will enable the
same principle to act in a less limited mannen
Having therefore got a general idea of these two
ultimates, the universal and the individual, and of
their relation to one another, let us now consider
the process of specialization. In what does the
specialization of a natural law consist? It consists
in making that law or principle produce an effect
which it could not produce under the simply generic
conditions spontaneously provided by nature.
ax
aa The Dori Lectures.
This selection of suitable conditions is the work
of Intelligence, it is a process of consciously arrang-
ing things in a new order, so as to produce a new
result. The principle is never new, for principles
are eternal and universal; but the knowledge that
the same principle will produce new results when
working under new conditions is the key to the
Unfoldment of infinite possibilities. What we have
therefore to consider is the working of Intelligence
in providing specific conditions for the operation
of universal principles, so as to bring about new
results which will transcend our past experiences.
The process does not consist in the introduction of
new elements, but in making new combinations of
elements which are always present; just as our an-
cestors had no conception of carriages that could
go without horses, and yet by a suitable combina-
tion of elements which were always in existence,
such vehicles are common objects in our streets to-
day. How, then, is the power of Intelligence to be
brought to bear upon the generic law of the rela-
tion between the Individual and the Universal so
as to specialize it into the production of greater
results than those which we have hitherto obtained?
All the practical attainments of science, which
place the civilized world of to-day in advance of the
times of King Alfred or Charlemagne, have been
gained by a uniform method, and that a very simple
The New Thought and the New Order. 23
one. It IS by always enquiring what is the affirma-
tive factor in any existing combination, and asking
ourselves why, in that particular combination, it
does not act beyond certain limits. What makes
the thing a success, so far as it goes, and what pre-
vents it going further? Then, by carefully consid-
ering the nature of the affirmative factor, we see
what sort of conditions to provide to enable it to
express itself more fully. This is the scientific
method; it has proved itself true in respect of ma-
terial things, and there is no reason why it should
not be equally reliable in respect ofi spiritual things
also.
Taking this as our method, we ask, What is the
affirmative factor in the whole creation, and in our-
selves as included in the creation, and, as we found
in the first lecture, this factor is Spirit — that in-
visible power which concentrates the primordial
ether into forms, and endows those forms with
various modes of motion, from the simply mechan-
ical motion of the planet up to the volitional motion
in man. And, since this is so, the primary affirma-
tive factor can only be the Feeling and the Thought
of the Universal Spirit.* Now, by the hypothesis
of the case, the Universal Spirit must be the Pure
Essence of Life, and therefore its feeling and
* See my *' Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science."
24 The Dorf Lectures.
thought can only be towards the continually in-
creasing expression of the Hvingness which it is;
and accordingly the specialization, of which we are
in search, must be along the line of affording it a
centre from which it may more perfectly realize this
feeling and express this thought : in other words the
way to specialize the generic principle of Spirit is
by providing new mental conditions in consonance
with its own original nature.
The scientific method of enquiry therefore brings
us to the conclusion that the required conditions for
translating the racial or generic operation of the
Spirit into a specialized individual operation is a
new way of thinking — a mode of thought concur-
ring with, and not in opposition to, the essential for-
ward movement of the Creative Spirit itself. This
implies an entire reversal of our old conceptions.
Hitherto we have taken forms and conditions as the
starting point of our thought and inferred that they
are the causes of mental states ; now we have learnt
that the true order of the creative process is exactly
the reverse, and that thought and feeling are the
causes, and forms and conditions the effects.
When we have learnt this lesson we have grasped
the foundation principle on which individual special-
ization of the generic law of the creative process
becomes a practical possibility.
New Thought, then, is not the name of a par-
The New Thought and the New Order. 25
ticular sect, but is the essential factor by which our
own future development is to be carried on ; and its
essence consists in seeing the relation of things in a
New Order. Hitherto we have inverted the true
order of cause and effect; now, by carefully con-
sidering the real nature of the Principle of Causa-
tion in itself — causa causans as distinguished from
causa causata — ^we return to the true order and
adopt a new method of thinking in accordance with
it.
In themselves this order and this method of
thinking are not new. They are older than the
foundation of the world, for they are those of the
Creative Spirit itself; and all through the ages this
teaching has been handed down under various
forms, the true meaning of which has been perceived
only by a few in each generation. But as the light
breaks in upon any individual it is a new light to
him, and so to each one in succession it becomes
the New Thought. And when anyone reaches it,
he finds himself in a New Order. He continues in-
deed to be included in the universal order of the
cosmos, but in a perfectly different way to what he
had previously supposed; for, from his new stand-
point, he finds that he is included, not so much as
a part of the general effect, but as a part of the
general cause; and when he perceives this he then
sees that the method of his further advance must
26 The Dari Lectures.
be by letting the General Cause flow more and
more freely into his own specific centre, and he
therefore seeks to provide thought conditions which
will enable him to do so.
Then, still employing the scientific method of
following up the affirmative factor, he realizes that
this universal causative power, by whatever name
he may call it, manifests as Supreme Intelligence in
the adaptation of means to ends. It does so in the
mechanism of the planet, in the production of sup-
ply for the support of physical life, and in the main-
tenance of the race as a whole. True, the investi-
gator is met at every turn with individual failure;
but his answer to this is that there is no cosmic
failure, and that the apparent individual failure is
itself a part of the cosmic process, and will diminish
in proportion as the individual attains to the recog-
nition of the Moving Principle of that process, and
provides the necessary conditions to enable it to
take a new starting point in his own individuality.
Now, one of these conditions is to recognize it as
Intelligence, and to remember that when working
through our own mentality it in no way changes its
essential nature, just as electricity loses none of its
essential qualities in passing through the special ap-
paratus which enables it to manifest as light.
When we see this, our line of thought will run
something as follows : — " My mind is a centre of
The New Thought and the New Order. 27
Divine operation. The Divine operation is always
for expansion and fuller expression, and this means
the production of something beyond what has gone
before, something entirely new, not included in past
experience, though proceeding out of it by an or-
derly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the
Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must
operate in the same manner in me; consequently in
my own special world, of which I am the centre, it
will move forward to produce new conditions, al-
ways in advance of any that have gone before.'*
This is a legitimate line of argument, from the
premises established in the recognition of the rela-
tion between the individual and the Universal
Mind; and it results in our looking to the Divine
Mind, not only as creative, but also as directive —
that is as determining the actual forms which the
conditions for its manifestation will take in our own
particular world, as well as supplying the energy for
their production. We miss the point of the rela-
tion between the individual and the universal, if
we do not see that the Originating Spirit is a form-
ing power. It is the forming power throughout
nature, and if we would specialize it we must learn
to trust its formative quality when operating from
its new starting point in ourselves.
But the question naturally arises. If this is so,
what part is taken by the individual? Our part is
28 The Dori Lectures.
to provide a concrete centre round which the Divine
energies can play. In the generic order of being
we exercise upon it a force of attraction in accord-
ance with the innate pattern of our particular indi-
viduality; and as we begin to realize the Law of this
relation, we, in our turn, are attracted towards the
Divine along the lines of least resistance, that is on
those lines which are most natural to our special
bent of mind. In this way we throw out certain
aspirations with the result that we intensify our
attraction of the Divine forces in a certain specific
manner, and they then begin to act both through us
and around us in accordance with our aspirations.
This is the rationale of the reciprocal action be*
tween the Universal Mind and the individual mind,
and this shows us that our desires should not be
directed so much to the acquisition of particular
things as to the reproduction in ourselves of partic-
ular phases of the Spirit's activity; and this, being
in its very nature creative, is bound to externalize
as corresponding things and circumstances. Then,
when these external facts appear in the circle of our
objective life, we must work upon them from the
objective stand-point. This is where many fall short
of completed work. They realize the subjective or
creative process, but do not see that it must be
followed by an objective or constructive process,
and consequently they are unpractical dreamers and
The New Thought and the New Order. 29
never reach the stage of completed work. The
creative process brings the materials and conditions
for the work to our hands; then we must make use
of them with diligence and common-sense — God
will provide the food, but He will not cook the
dinner.
This, then, is the part taken by the individual,
and it is thus that he becomes a distributing centre
of the Divine energy, neither on the one hand trying
to lead it like a blind force, nor on the other being
himself under a blind unreasoning impulsion from
it. He receives guidance because he seeks guid-
ance; and he both seeks and receives according to
a Law which he is able to recognize; so that he no
more sacrifices his liberty or dwarfs his powers,
than does an engineer who submits to the generic
laws of electricity, in order to apply them to some
specific purpose. The more intimate his knowl-
edge of this Law of Reciprocity becomes, the more
he finds that it leads on to Liberty, on the same
principle by which we find in physical science that
nature obeys us precisely in the same degree to
which we first obey nature. As the esoteric maxim
has it " What is a truth on one plane is a truth on
all." But the key to this enfranchisement of body,
mind, and circumstances is in that new thought
which becomes creative of new conditions, because
it realizes the true order of the creative process.
30 The DorS Lectures.
Therefore it is that, if we would bring a new order
of Life, Light, and Liberty into our lives we must
commence by bringing a new order into our
thought, and find in ourselves the starting point of
a new creative series, not by the force of personal
will, but by union with the Divine Spirit, which in
the expression of its inherent Love and Beauty,
makes all things new.
THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The three preceding lectures have touched upon
certain fundamental truths in a definite order — ^first
the nature of the Originating Spirit itself, next the
generic relation of the individual to this All-em-
bracing Spirit, and lastly the way to specialize this
relation so as to obtain greater results from it
than spontaneously arise by its merely generic ac-
tion, and we have found that this can only be done
through a new order of thought. This sequence is
logical because it implies a Power, an Individual
who understands the Power, and a Method of ap-
plying the power deduced from understanding its
nature. These are general principles without real-
izing which it is impossible to proceed further, but
assuming that the reader has grasped their signifi-
cance, we may now go on to consider their appli-
cation in greater detail.
Now this application must be a personal one, for
it is only through the individual that the higher
specialization of the power can take place, but at
the same time this must not lead us to suppose that
the individual, himself, brings the creative force
31
3« The DorS Lectures.
into being. To suppose this is inversion; and we
cannot impress upon ourselves too deeply that the
relation of the individual to the Divine Spirit is
that of a distributor, and not that of the original
creator. If this is steadily borne in mind the way
will become clear, otherwise we shall be led into
confusion.
What, then, is the Power which we are to dis-
tribute? It is the Originating Spirit itself. We
are sure that it is this because the new order of
thought always begins at the beginning of any
series which it contemplates bringing into manifes-
tation, and it is based upon the fact that the origin
of everything is Spirit. It is in this that its crea-
tive power resides; hence the person who is in the
true new order of thought assumes as an axiomatic
fact that what he has to distribute, or differentiate
into manifestation is nothing else than the Origin-
ating Spirit. This being the case, it is evident that
the purpose of the distribution must be the more
perfect expression of the Originating Spirit as that
which it is in itself, and what it is in itself is em-
phatically Life. What is seeking for expression,
then, is the perfect Livingness of the Spirit; and
this expression is to be found, through ourselves,
by means of our renewed mode of thought. Let
us see, then, how our new order of thought, with
regard to the Principle of Life, is likely to operate.
The Life of the Spirit. 33
In our old order of thought we have always asso-
ciated Life with the physical body — ^life has been
for us the supreme physical fact. Now, however,
we know that Life is much more than this ; but, as
the greater includes the less, it includes physical
life as one mode of its manifestation. The true
order does not require us to deny the reality of
physical life or to call it an illusion; on the contrary
it sees in physical life the completion of a great cre-
ative series, but it assigns it the proper place in that
series, which is what the old mode of thought did
not.
When we realize the truth about the Creative
Process, we see that the originating life is not
physical: its livingness consists in thought and feel-
ing. By this inner movement it throws out ve-
hicles through which to function, and these become
living forms because of the inner principle which
is sustaining them; so that the Life with which we
are primarily concerned in the new order is the
life of thought and feeling in ourselves as the ve-
hicle, or distributing medium, of the Life of the
Spirit.
Then, if we have grasped the idea of the Spirit
as the great forming Power, as stated in the last
lecture, we shall seek in it the fountain-head of
Form as well as of Power: and as a logical deduc-
tion from this we shall look to it to give form to our
34 The Dore Lectures.
thoughts and feelings. If the principle is once
recognised the sequence is obvious. The form
taken by our outward conditions, whether of body
or circumstance, depends on the form taken by our
thoughts and feelings, and our thoughts and feel-
ings will take form from that source from which we
allow them to receive suggestion. Accordingly if
we allow them to accept their fundamental sugges-
tions from the relative and limited, they will assume
a corresponding form and transmit them to our
external environment, thus repeating the old order
of limitation in a ceaselessly recurring round.
Now our object is to get out of this circle of limita-
tion, and the only way to do so is to get our
thoughts and feelings moulded into new forms con-
tinually advancing to greater and greater perfec-
tion. To meet this requirement, therefore, there
must be a forming power greater than that of our
own unaided conceptions, and this is to be found
in our realization of the Spirit as the Supreme
Beauty, or Wisdom, moulding our thoughts and
feelings into shapes harmoniously adjusted to the
fullest expression, in and through us, of the Living-
ness which Spirit is in itself.
Now this is nothing more than transferring to
the innermost plane of origination, a principle with
which all readers who are " in the thought '* may
be presumed to be quite familiar — ^the principle of
The Life of the Spirit. 35
Receptiveness. We all know what is meant by a
receptive mental attitude when applied to healing
or telepathy; and does it not logically follow that
the same principle may be applied to the receiving
of life itself from the Supreme Source? What is
wanted, therefore, is to place ourselves in a recep-
tive mental attitude towards the Universal Spirit
with the intention of receiving its forming influence
into our mental substance. It is always the pres-
ence of a definite intention that distinguishes the
intelligent receptive attitude of mind from a merely
sponge-like absorbancy, which sucks in any and
every influence that may happen to be floating
round: for we must not shut our eyes to the fact
that there are various influences in the mental at-
mosphere by which we are surrounded, and some
of them of the most undesirable kind. Clear and
definite intention is therefore as necessary in our
receptive attitude as in our active and creative one;
and if our intention is to have our own thoughts
and feelings moulded into such forms as to express
those of the Spirit, then we establish that relation
to the Spirit which, by the conditions of the case,
must necessarily lead us to the conception of new
ideals vitalised by a power which will enable us to
bring them into concrete manifestation. It is in
this way that we become differentiating centres of
the Divine Thought giving it expression in form in
36 The Dori Lectures.
the world of space and time, and thus is solved the
great problem of enabling the Universal to act upon
the plane of the particular without being hampered
by those limitations which the merely generic law
of manifestation imposes upon it. It is just here
that subconscious mind performs the function of a
" bridge " between the finite and the infinite as
noted in my " Edinburgh Lectures on Mental
Science " (page 31), and it is for this reason that a
recognition of its susceptibility to impression is so
important.
By establishing, then, a personal relation to the
life of the Spirit, the sphere of the individual be-
comes enlarged. The reason is that he allows a
greater intelligence than his own to take the in-
itiative; and since he knows that this Intelligence
is also the very Principle of Life itself, he cannot
have any fear that it will act in any way to the
diminution of his individual life, for that would be
to stultify its own operation — ^it would be self-de-
structive action which is a contradiction in terms
to the conception of Creative Spirit. Knowing,
then, that by its inherent nature this Intelligence
can only work to the expansion of the individual
life, we can rest upon it with the utmost confidence
and trust it to take an initiative which will lead to
far greater results than any we could forecast from
the stand-point of our own knowledge. So long as
The Life of the Spirit. 37
we insist on dictating the particular form which the
action of the Spirit is to take, we limit it, and so
close against ourselves avenues of expansion which
might otherwise have been open to us; and if we
ask ourselves why we do this we shall find that in
the last resort it is because we do not believe in the
Spirit as a forming power. We have, indeed, ad-
vanced to the conception of it as executive power,
which will work to a prescribed pattern, but we
have yet to grasp the conception of it as versed in
the art of design, and capable of elaborating
schemes of construction, which will not only be
complete in themselves, but also in perfect harmony
with one another. When we advance to the con-
ception of the Spirit as containing in itself the
ideal of Form as well as of Power, we shall cease
from the effort of trying to force things into a
particular shape, whether on the inner or the outer
plane, and shall be content to trust the inherent
harmoniousness or Beauty of the Spirit to produce
combinations far in advance of anything that we
could have conceived ourselves. This does not
mean that we shall reduce ourselves to a condition
of apathy, in which all desire, expectation and en-
thusiasm have been quenched, for these are the
mainspring of our mental machinery; but on the
contrary their action will be quickened by the
knowledge that there is working at the back of
38 The DorS Lectures.
them a Formative Principle so infallible that it can«»
not miss its mark; so that however good and beau-
tiful the existing forms may be, we may always rest
in the happy expectation of something still better
to come. And it will come by a natural law of
growth, because the Spirit is in itself the Principle
of Increase. They will grow out of present condi-
tions for the simple reason that if you are to reach
some further point it can only be by starting from
where you are now. Therefore it is written, " Des-
pise not the day of small things." There is only
one proviso attached to this forward movement of
the Spirit in the world of our own surroundings,
and that is that we shall co-operate with it; and
this co-operation consists in making the best use
of existing conditions in cheerful reliance on the
Spirit of Increase to express itself through us, and
for us, because we are in harmony with it. This
mental attitude will be found of immense value
in setting us free from worry and anxiety,
and as a consequence our work will be done
in a much more efficient manner. We shall
do the present work for its own sake, knowing
that herein is the principle of unfoldment; and do-
ing it simply for its own sake we shall bring to
bear upon it a power of concentration which can-
not fail of good results — ^and this quite naturally
and without any toilsome effort. We shall then
The Life of the Spirit. 39
find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith
in ourselves because we first have faith in Godj
and we shall discover that this Divine self-confi-
dence is something very different from a boastful
egotism which assumes a personal superiority over
others. It is simply the assurance of a man who
knows that he is working in accordance with a law
of nature. He does not claim as a personal
achievement what the Law does for him: but on
the other hand he does not trouble himself about
outcries against his presumptuous audacity raised
by persons who are ignorant of the Law which he
is employing. He is therefore neither boastful nor
timorous, but simply works on in cheerful expect-
ancy because he knows that his reliance is upon a
Law which cannot be broken.
In this way, then, we must realize the Life of the
Spirit as being also the Law of the Spirit. The two
are identical, and cannot deny themselves. Our
recognition of them gives them a new starting
point through our own mentality, but they still
continue to be the same in their nature, and unless
limited or mverted by our mental affirmation of
limited or inverted conditions, they are bound to
work out into fuller and continually fuller expres-
sion of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit
is in itself. Our path, therefore, is plain; it is
simply to contemplate the Life, Love, and Beauty
40 The Dari Lectures.
of the Originating Spirit and affirm that we are
already giving expression to it in our thoughts and
in our actions however insignificant they may at
present appear. This path may be very narrow
and humble in its beginning, but it ever grows
wider and mounts higlier, for it is the continually
expanding expression of the Life of the Spirit which
is infinite and knows no limits.
ALPHA AND OMEGA.
Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last
What does this mean? It means the entire series
of causation from the first originating movement
to the final and completed result. We may take
this on any scale from the creation of a cosmos to
the creation of a lady's robe. Everything has its
origin in an idea, a thought; and it has its comple-
tion in the manifestation of that thought in form.
Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the
Alpha and Omega of the series are the thought and
the thing. This shows us that in essence the thing
already existed in the thought. Omega is already
potential in Alpha, just as in the Pythagorean sys-
tem all numbers are said to proceed from unity
and to be resolvable back again into it. Now it is
this general principle of the already existence of
the thing in the thought that we have to lay hold
of, and as we find it true in an architect's design of
the house that is to be, so we find it true in the
great work of the Architect of the Universe.
When we see this we have realized a general prin-
ciple, which we find at work everywhere. That is
4.Z
42 The Dore Lectures.
the meaning of a general principle: it can be applied
to any sort of subject; and the use of studying gen-
eral principles is to give them particular application
to anything we may have to deal with. Now what
we have to deal with most of all is ourselves, and
so we come to the consideration of Alpha and
Omega in the human being. In the vision of St.
John, the speaker of the words, "I am Alpha and
Omega, the First and the Last," is described as
" Like unto a son of man "^ — ^that is, however trans-
cendent the appearance in the vision, it is essen-
tially human, and thus suggests to us the presence
of the universal principle at the human level. But
the figure in the apocalyptic vision is not that of
man as we ordinarily know him. It is that of
Omega as it subsists enshrined in Alpha: it is the
ideal of humanity as it subsists in the Divine Mind
which was manifested in objective form to the eyes
of the seer, and therefore presented the Alpha and
Omega of that idea in all the majesty of Divine
glory.
But if we grasp the truth that the thing is al-
ready existent in the thought, do we not see that
this transcendent Omega must be already existent
in the Divine ideal of every one of us? If on the
plane of the absolute time is not, then does it not
follow that this glorified humanity is a present fact
in the Divine Mind? And if this is so, then this
Alpha and Omega. 43
fact is eternally true regarding every human being.
But if it is true that the thing exists in the thought,
it is equally true that the thought finds form in the
thing; and since things exist under the relative
conditions of time and space, they are necessarily
subject to a law of Growth, so that while the sub-
sistence of the thing in the thought is perfect ab
initio, the expression of the thought in the thing
is a matter of gradual development. This is a
point which we must never lose sight of in our
studies; and we must never lose sight of the per-
fection of the thing in the thought because we do
not yet see the perfection of the thought in the
thing. Therefore we must remember that man, as
we know him now, has by no means reached the ul-
timate of his evolution. We are only yet in the
making, but we have now reached a point where we
can facilitate the evolutionary process by conscious
co-operation with the Creative Spirit. Our share
in this work commences with the recognition of the
Divine ideal of man, and thus finding the pattern
by which we are to be guided. For since the per-
son to be created after this pattern is ourself, it
follows that, by whatever processes the Divine ideal
transforms itself into concrete reality, the place
where those processes are to work must be within
ourselves; in other words, the creative action of
the Spirit takes place through the laws of our own
44 The Dori Lectures.
mentality. If it is a true maxim that the thing
must take form in the thought before the thought
can take form in the thing, then it is plain that the
Divine Ideal can only be externalized in our ob-
jective life in proportion as it is first formed in our
thought; and it takes form in our thought only to
the extent to which we apprehend its existence in
the Divine Mind. By the nature of the relation
between the individual mind and the Universal
Mind it is strictly a case of reflection; and in pro-
portion as the mirror of our own mind blurs or
clearly reflects the image of the Divine ideal, so
will it give rise to a correspondingly feeble or vig-
orous reproduction of it in our external life.
This being the rationale of the matter, why
should we limit our conception of the Divine ideal
of ourselves? Why should we say, " I am too mean
a creature ever to reflect so glorious an image "—
or " God never intended such a limitless ideal to
be reproduced in human beings." In saying such
things we expose our ignorance of the whole Law
of the Creative Process. We shut our eyes to the
fact that the Omega of completion already subsists
in the Alpha of conception, and that the Alpha of
conception would be nothing but a lying illusion if
it was not capable of expression in the Omega of
completion. The creative process in us is that we
become the individual reflection of what we realize
Alpha and Omega. 45
God to be relatively to ourselves, and therefore if
we realize the Divine Spirit as the infinUe potential
of all that can constitute a perfected human being,
this conception must, by the Law of the Creative
Process, gradually build up a corresponding image
in our mind, which in turn will act upon our exter-
nal conditions.
This, by the laws of mind, is the nature of the
process and it shows us what St. Paul means when
he speaks of Christ being formed in us (Gal. iv. 19)
and what in another place he calls being renewed
in knowledge after the image of Him that created
us (Col. iii. 10). It is a thoroughly logical se-
quence of cause and effect, and what we require is
to see more clearly the Law of this sequence and
use it intelligently — ^that is why St. Paul says it is
being " renewed in knowledge ": it is a New Knowl-
edge, the recognition of principles which we had
not previously apprehended. Now the fact which,
in our past experience, we have not grasped is that
the human mind forms a new point of departure for
the work of the Creative Spirit; and in proportion
as we see this more and more clearly, the more we
shall find ourselves entering into a new order of
life in which we become less and less subject to the
old limitations. This is not a reward arbitrarily be-
stowed upon us for holding dogmatically to certain
mere verbal statements, but it is the natural result
46 The Dori Lectures.
of understanding the supreme law of our own be-
ing. On its own plane it is as purely scientific as
the law of chemical re-action; only here we are not
dealing with the interaction of secondary causes
but with the Self-originating action of Spirit. Hence
a new force has to be taken into account which
does not occur in physical science, the power of
Feeling. Thought creates form, but it is feeling
that gives vitality to thought. Thought without
feeling may be constructive as in some great engi-
neering work, but it can never be creative as in the
work of the artist or musician ; and that which orig-
inates within itself a new order of causation is, so
far as all pre-existing forms are concerned, a crea-
tion ex nihilo, and is therefore Thought expressive
of Feeling. It is this indissoluble union of
Thought and Feeling that distinguishes creative
thought from merely analytical thought and places
it in a different category; and therefore if we are to
afford a new starting-point for carrying on the work
of creation it must be by assimilating the feeling
of the Originating Spirit as part and parcel of its
thought — it is that entering into the Mind of the
Spirit of which I spoke in the first address.
Now the images in the Mind of the Spirit must
necessarily be generic. The reason for this is that
by its very nature the Principle of Life must be
prolific, that is, tending to Multiplicity, and there-
Alpha and Omega. 47
fore the original Thought-image giust be funda-
mental to whole races, and not exclusive to partic-
ular individuals. Consequently the images in the
Mind of the Spirit must be absolute types of the
true essentials of the perfect development of the
race, just what Plato meant by architypal ideas.
This is the perfect subsistence of the thing in the
thought. Therefore it is that our evolution as
centres of creative activity, the exponents of new
laws, and through them of new conditions, depends
on our realizing in the Divine Mind the architype
of mental perfection, at once as thought and feel-
ing. But when we find all this in the Divine Mind,
do we not meet with an infinite and glorious Per-
sonality? There is nothing lacking of all that we
can understand by Personality, excepting outward
form; and since the very essence of telepathy is
that it dispenses with the physical presence, we find
ourselves in a position of interior communion with
a Personality at once Divine and Human. This is
that Personality of the Spirit which St. John saw in
the apocalyptic vision, and which by the very con-
ditions of the case is the Alpha and Omega of
Humanity.
But, as I have said, it is simply generic in itself,
and it becomes active and specific only by a purely
personal relation to the individual. But once more
we must realize that nothing can take place except
48 The Dari Lectures.
according to Law, and therefore this specific rela-
tion is nothing arbitrary, but arises out of the gen-
eric Law applied under specific conditions. And
since what makes a law generic is precisely the
fact that it does not supply the specific conditions,
it follows that the conditions for the specialising of
the Law must be provided by the individual. Then
it is that his recognition of the originating creative
movement, as arising from combined Thought and
Feeling, becomes a practical working asset. He
realizes that there is a Heart and Mind of the
Spirit reciprocal to his own heart and mind, that he
is not dealing with a filmy abstraction, nor yet with
a mere mathematical sequence, but with something
that is pulsating with a Life as warm and vivid and
full of interest as his own — ^nay, more so, for it is
the Infinite of all that he himself is. And his recog-
nition goes even further than this, for since this
specialization can only take place through the in-
dividual himself, it logically follows that the Life,
which he thus specializes, become his own life.
Qiioad the individual it does not know itself apart
from him. But this self-recognition through the
individual cannot in any way change the inherent
nature of the Creative Spirit, and therefore to the
extent to which the individual perceives its identi-
fication with himself, he places himself under its
guidance, and so he becomes one of those who are
Alpha and Omega. 49
"led by the Spirit." Thus he begins to find the
Alpha and Omega of the Divine ideal reproduced
in himself — ^in a very small degree at present, but
containing the principle of perpetual growth into
an infinite expansion of which we can as yet form
no conception.
St. John sums up the whole of this position in
his memorable words: — " Beloved now are we the
Sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be; but we know that when He shall appear
(i,e., become clear to us) we shall be like Him; for
(i.e,, the reason of all this) we shall see Him as He
is " (I. John iii. 2).
THE CREATIVE POWER OF THOUGHT.
One of the great axioms in the new or-
der of ideas, of which I have spoken, is that our
Thought possesses creative power, and since the
whole superstructure depends on this foundation,
it is well to examine it carefully. Now the start-
ing point is to see that Thought, or purely mental
action, is the only possible source from which the
existing creation could ever have come into mani-
festation at all, and it is on this account that in the
preceding addresses I have laid stress on the origin
of the cosmos. It is therefore not necessary to go
over this ground again, and we will start this morn*
ing's enquiry on the assumption that every mani-
festation is in essence the expression of a Divine
Thought. This being so, our own mind is the ex-
pression of a Divine Thought. The Divine
Thought has produced something which itself is
capable of thinking; but the question is whether its
thinking has the same creative quality as that of
the Parent Mind.
Now by the very hypothesis of the case the whole
Creative Process consists in the continual pressing
so
The Creative Power of Thought. 51
forward of the Universal Spirit for expression
through the individual and particular, and Spirit in
its different modes is therefore the Life and Sub-
stance of the universe. Hence it follows that if
there is to be an expression of thinking power it can
only be by expressing the same thinking power
which subsists latent in the Originating Spirit. If
it were less than this it would only be some sort of
mechanism and would not be thinking power, so
that to be thinking power at all it must be identical
in kind with that of the Originating Spirit. It is
for this reason that man is said to be created in the
image and likeness of God; and if we realize that it
is impossible for him to be otherwise, we shall find
a firm foundation from which to draw many im-
portant deductions.
But if our thought possesses this creative power,
why are we hampered by adverse conditions? The
answer is, because hitherto we have used our power
invertedly. We have taken the starting point of
our thought from external facts and consequently
created a repetition of facts of a similar nature, and
so long as we do this we must needs go on per-
petuating the old circle of limitation. And, owing
to the sensitiveness of the subconscious mind to
suggestion — (See Edinburgh Lectures, chapter
V.) — ^we are subject to a very powerful negative in-
fluence from those who are unacquainted with
$3 The Dori Lectures.
affirmative principles, and thus race-beliefs and the
thought-currents of our more immediate environ-
ment tend to consolidate our own inverted think-
ing. It is therefore not surprising that the creative
power of our thought, thus used in a wrong direc-
tion, has produced the limitations of which we com-
plain. The remedv._ _L hen, is by r eversing our
method of thinking, and instead of taki ngs extern al
facts as ou r_ starting point, taking the inherent
nature of menta l power as our starting_point We
have already gained two great steps in this direc-
tion, first by seeing that the whole manifested cos-
mos could have had its origin nowhere but in
mental power, and secondly by realizing that our
own mental power must be the same in kind with
that of the Originating Mind.
Now we can go a step further and see how this
power in ourselves can be perpetuated and intensi-
fied. By the nature of the creative process your
mind is itself a thought of the Parent Mind; so, as
long as this thought of the Universal Mind sub-
sists, you will subsist, for you are it. But so long
as you think this thought it continues to subsist,
and necessarily remains present in the Divine Mind,
thus fulfilling the logical conditions required for the
perpetuation of the individual life. A poor analogy
of the process may be found in a self-influencing
dynamo where the magnetism generates the cur-
The Creative Power of Thought. 53
rent and the current intensifies the magnetism with
the result of producing a still stronger current until
the limit of saturation is reached; only in the sub-
stantive infinitude of the Universal Mind and the
potential infinitude of the Individual Mind there is
no limit of saturation. Or we may compare the
interaction of the two minds to two mirrors, a great
and a small one, opposite each other, with the word
" Life " engraved on the large one. Then, by the
law of reflection, the word " Life " will also appear
on the image of the smaller mirror reflected in the
greater. Of course these are only very imperfect
analogies; but if you can once grasp the idea of
your own individuality as a thought in the Divine
Mind which is able to perpetuate itself by thinking
of itself as the thought which it is, you have got at
the root of the whole matter, and by the same
process you will not only perpetuate your life but
will also expand it.
When we realize this on the one hand, and on
the other that all external conditions, including the
body, are produced by thought, we find ourselves
standing between two infinites, the infinite of Mind
and the infinite of Substance — ^from both of which
we can draw what we will, and mould specific con-
ditions out of the Universal Substance by the Cre-
ative Power which we draw in from the Universal
Mind. But we must recollect that this is not by
54 The Dorl Lectures.
the force of personal will upon the substance, which
is an error that will land us in all sorts of inversion,
but by realizing our mind as a channel through
which the Universal Mind operates upon substances
in a particular way, according to the mode of
thought which we are seeking to embody. If, then,
our thought is habitually concentrated upon prin-
ciples rather than on particular things, realizing
that principles are nothing else than the Divine
Mind in operation, we shall find that they will nec-
essarily germinate to produce their own expression
in corresponding facts, thus verifying the words of
the Great Teacher, " Seek ye first the Kingdom of
God and His righteousness and all these things
shall be added unto you."
But we must never lose sight of the reason for
the creative power of our thought, that it is be-
cause our mind is itself a thought of the Divine
Mind, and that consequently our increase in living-
ness and creative power must be in exact propor-
tion to our perception of our relation to the Parent
Mind. In such considerations as these is to be
found the philosophical basis of the Bible doctrine
of " Sonship,'* with its culmination in the concep-
tion of the Christ. These are not mere fancies but
the expression of strictly scientific principles, in
their application to the deepest problems of the in-
dividual life; and their basis is that each one's world.
The Creative Power of Thought. 55
whether in or out of the flesh, must necessarily be
created by his own consciousness, and, in its turn,
his mode of consciousness will necessarily take its
colour from his conception of his relation to the
Divine Mind — to the exclusion of light and colour,
if he realizes no Divine Mind, and to their building
up into forms of beauty in proportion as he realizes
his identity of being with that All-Originating Spirit
which is Light, Love, and Beauty in itself. Thus
the great creative work of Thought in each of us
is to make us consciously *' sons and daughters of
the Almighty,'* realizing that by our divine origin
we can never be really separated from the Parent
Mind which is continually seeking expression
through us, and that any apparent separation is due
to our own misconception of the true nature of the
inherent relation between the Universal and the
Individual. This is the lesson which the Great
Teacher has so luminously put before us in the
parable of the Prodigal Son.
THE GREAT AFFIRMATIVE.
The Great Affirmative appears in two modes, the
cosmic and the individual. In its essence it is the
same in both, but in each it works from a different
standpoint. It is always the principle of Being-—
that which is, as distinguished from that which is
not; but to grasp the true significance of this saying
we must understand what is meant by " that which
is not." It is something more than mere non-ex-
istence, for obviously we should not trouble our-
selves about what is non-existent. It is that which
both is and is not at the same time, and the thing
that answers to this description is " Conditions.'*
The little affirmative is that which affirms particular
conditions as all that it can grasp, while the great
affirmative grasps a wider conception, the con-
ception of that which gives rise to conditions.
Cosmically it is that power of Spirit which sends
forth the whole creation as its expression of itself,
and it is for this reason that I have drawn attention
in the preceding lectures to the idea of the creation
ex nihilo of the whole visible universe. As Eastern
and Western Scriptures alike tell us it is the breath-
s'
The Great AfRrmative. S7
ing-forth of Original Spirit; and if you have fol-
lowed what I have said regarding the reproduction
of this Spirit in the individual — that by the very
nature of the creative process the human mind
must be of the same quality with the Divine Mind
— then we find that a second mode of the Origin-
ating Spirit becomes possible, namely that of oper-
ation through the individual mind. But whether
acting cosmically or personally it is always the
same Spirit and therefore cannot lose its inherent
character which is that of the Power which creates
ex nihilo. It is the direct contradiction of the
maxim " ex nihilo nihil fit " — nothing can be made
out of nothing; and it is the recognition of the
presence in ourselves of this power, which can make
something out of nothing, that is the key to our
further progress. As the logical outcome of the
cosmic creative process, the evolutionary work
reaches a point where the Originating Power cre-
ates an image of itself; and thus affords a fresh
point of departure from which it can work specific
cally, just as in the cosmic process it works generr
ically. From this new standpoint it does not in
any way contradict the laws of the cosmic order,
but proceeds to specialize them, and thus to bring
out results through the individual which could not
be otherwise attained.
Now the Spirit does this by the same method as
$8 The Dori Lectures.
in the Original Creation, namely by creating ex
nihilo; for otherwise it would be bound by the
limitations necessarily inherent in the cosmic form
of things, and so no fresh creative starting point
would have been attained. This is why the Bible
lays such stress on the principle of Monogenesis, or
creation from a single power instead of from a pair
or syzegy; and it is on this account that we are
told that this One-ness of God is the foundation of
all the commandments, and that the " Son of God ''
is declared to be " monogenes *' or one-begotten,
for that is the correct translation of the Greek
word. The immense importance of this principle of
creation from a single power will become apparent
as we realize more fully the results proceeding from
the assumption of the opposite principle, or the
dualism of the creative power; but as the discussion
of this great subject would require a volume to it*
self, I must, at present, content myself with saying
that this insistence of the Bible upon the singleness
of the Creative Power is based upon a knowledge
which goes to the very root of esoteric principles,
and is therefore not to be set aside in favour of
dualistic systems, though superficially the latter
may appear more consonant to reason.
If, then, it is possible to put the Great Affirma-
tion into words it is that God is ONE and that this
ONE finds centre in ourselves; and if the full mean-
The Great AMrmative. 59
ing of this statement is realized, the logical result
will be found to be a new creation both in and from
ourselves. We shall realize in ourselves the work-
ing of a new principle whose distinguishing feature
is its simplicity. It is ONE-ness and is not
troubled about any second. Hence what it con-
templates is not how its action will be modified by
that of some second principle, something which will
compel it to work in a particular manner and so
limit it; but what it contemplates is its own Unity.
Then it perceives that its Unity consists in a
greater and a lesser movement, just as the rotation
of the earth on its axis does not interfere with its
rotation round the sun but are both motions of the
same unit, and are definitely related to each other.
In like manner we find that the Spirit is moving
simultaneously in the macrocosm of the universe
and in the microcosm of the individual, and the two
movements harmonize because they are that of the
same Spirit, and the latter is included in the former
and pre-supposes it. The Great Affirmation, there-
fore, is the perception that the " I AM " is ONE,
always harmonious with itself, and including all
things in this harmony for the simple reason that
there is no second creative power; and when the
individual realizes that this always-single power is
the root of his own being, and therefore has centre
in himself and finds expression through him, he
6o The DorS Lectures.
learns to trust its singleness and the consequent
harmony of its action in him with what it is doing
around him. Then he sees that the affirmation " I
and my Father are ONE " is a necessary deduction
from a correct apprehension of the fundamental
principles of being; and then, on the principle that
the less must be included in the greater, he desires
that harmonious unity of action be maintained by
the adaptation of his own particular movement to
the larger movement of the Spirit working as the
Creative Principle through the great whole. In
this way we become centres through which the cre-
ative forces find specialization by the development
of that personal factor on which the specific appli-
cation of general laws must always depend. A spe-
cific sort of individuality is formed, capable of be-
ing the link between the great Spiritual Power of
the universal and the manifestation of the relative
in time and space because it consciously partakes
of both; and because the individual of this class
recognizes the singleness of the Spirit as the start-
ing point of all things, he endeavours to withdraw
his mind from all arguments derived from external
conditions, whether past or present, and to fix it
upon the forward movement of the Spirit which he
knows to be always identical both in the universe
and in himself. He ceases the attempt to dictate
to the Spirit, because he does not see in it a mere
The Great Affirmative. 6i
blind force, but reveres it as the Supreme Intelli-
gence: and on the other hand he does not grovel
before it in doubt and fear, because he knows it is
one with himself and is realizing itself through him,
and therefore cannot have any purpose antago-
nistic to his own individual welfare. Realizing this
he deliberately places his thoughts under the guid-
ance of the Divine Spirit, knowing that his out-
ward acts and conditions must thereby be brought
into harmony with the great forward movement
of the Spirit, not only at the stage he has now
reached, but at all future stages. He does not at
all deny the power of his own thought as the crea-
tive agent in his own personal world, — on the con-
trary it is precisely on the knowledge of this fact
that his perception of the true adjustment between
the principles of Life is based; but for this very
reason he is the more solicitous to be led by that
Wisdom which can see what he cannot see, so that
his personal control over the conditions of his own
life may be employed to its continual increase and
development.
In this way our affirmation of the " I am " ceases
to be the petulant assertion of our limited person-
ality and becomes the affirmation that the Great I
AM affirms its own I AM-ness both in us and
through us, and thus our use of the words becomes
in very truth the Great Affirmative, or that which
62 The Dori Lectures.
is the root of all being as distinguished from that
which has no being in itself but is merely external-
ized by being as the vehicle for its expression. We
shall realize our true place as subordinate creative
centres, perfectly independent of existing conditions
because the creative process is that of monogenesis
and requires no other factor than the Spirit for its
exercise, but at the same time subordinate to the
Divine Spirit in the greatness of its inherent for-
ward movement because there is only ONE Spirit
and it cannot from one centre antagonize what it is
doing from another. Thus the Great Affirmation
makes us children of the Great King, at once living
in obedience to that Power which is above us, and
exercising this same power over all that world of
secondary causation which is below us.
Thus in our measure and station each one of us
will receive the mission of the I AM,
CHRIST THE FULFILLING OF THE LAWl
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the proph-
ets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfil." (Matt. v. zy.)
"Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth." (Rom. x. 4.)
If these words are the utterance of a mere sec-
tarian superstition they are worthless; but if they
are the statement of a great principle, then it is
worth our while to enquire what that principle is.
The fulfilling of anything is the bringing into com-
plete realization of all that it potentially contains,
and so the filling of any law to its fulness means
bringing out all the possibilities which are hidden
in it. This is precisely the method which has
brought forth all the advances of material civiliza-
tion. The laws of nature are the same now that
they were in the days of our rugged Anglo-Saxon
ancestors, but they brought out only an infinitesi-
mal fraction of the possibilities which those laws
contain : now we have brought out a good deal
more, but we have by no means exhausted them,
and so we continue to advance, not by contradict-
ing natural laws, but by more fully realizing their
63
64 The Dori Lectures.
capacity. Why should we not, then, apply the
same method to ourselves and see whether there
are no potentialities hidden away in the law of our
own being which we have not as yet by any means
brought to their fulfilment? We talk of a good
time coming and of the ameliorating of the race;
but do we reflect that the race is composed of in-
dividuals and that therefore real advance is to be
made only by individual improvement, and not by
Act of Parliament? and if so, then the individual
with whom to begin is ourself.
The complete manifestation of the Law of Indi-
viduality is the end or purpose of the Bible teach-
ing concerning Christ. It is a teaching based upon
Law, spiritual and mental, fully recognizing that no
effect can be produced except by the operation of an
adequate cause; and Christ is set before us both as
explaining the causes and exhibiting the full meas-
ure of the effects. All this is according to Law;
and the importance of its being according to Law
is that Law is universal, and the potentialities of the
Law are therefore inherent in everyone — there is no
special law for anybody, but anybody can specialize
the law by using it with a fuller understanding of
how much can be got out of it; and the purpose of
the Scriptiu-e teaching regarding Christ is to help us
to do this.
The preceding lectures have led us step by step
Christ the FulMing of the Law. 65
to see that the Originating Spirit, which first
brought the worid into existence, is also the root of
our own individuality, and is therefore always ready,
by its inherent nature, to continue the creative proc-
ess from this individual stand-point as soon as the
necessary conditions are provided, and these con-
ditions are thought-conditions. Then by realizing
the relation of Christ to the Originating Mind, the
Parent Spirit or " Father," we receive a standard of
thought which is bound to act creatively bringing
out all the potentialities of our hidden being. Now
the relation of Christ to the " Father " is that of the
Architypal Idea in the All-creating Mind of which
I have previously spoken, and so we arrive at the
conception of the Christ-idea as a universal prin-
ciple, and as being an idea therefore capable of re-
production in the individual Mind, thus explaining
St. Paul's meaning when he speaks of Christ being
formed in us. It is here that the principle of mono-
genesis comes in, that principle which I have en-
deavoured to describe in the earlier part of the
present series as originating the whole manifested
creation by an internal action of the Spirit upon
itself; and it is the entire absence of control by any
second power that renders the realization in exter-
nal actuality of a purely mental ideal possible. For
this reason systematic spiritual study commences
with the contemplation of the existing cosmos, and
66 The Dar6 Lectures.
we then transfer the conception of the monogenetic
power of the Spirit from the cosmos to the individ-
ual and realize that the same Spirit is able to do the
same thing in ourselves. This is the New Thought
which in time will fulfil itself in the New Order, and
we thus provide new thought-conditions which
enable the Spirit to carry on its creative work from
a new stand-point, that of our own individuality.
This attainment by the Spirit of a new starting-
point is what is meant by the esoteric doctrine of
the Octave. The Octave is the starting-point of a
new series reduplicating the starting-point of the
previous series at a different level, just as does the
octave note in music. We find this principle con-
stantly referred to in Scripture — the completion of
a prior series in the number Seven, and the starting
of a new series by the number Eight, which takes
the same place in the second series that the number
One did in the first. The second series comes out
of the first by natural growth and could not come
into existence without it, hence the First or Origin-
ating niunber of the second series is the Eighth
if we regard the second series as the prolongation
of the first. Seven is the numerical correspondence
of complete manifestation because it is the combi-
nation of three and four, which respectively repre-
sent the complete working of the spiritual and ma-
terial factors — ^involution and evolution — ^and thus
Christ the FuKUing of the Law. 67
together constitute the finished whole. Students
of the Tarot will here realize the process by which
the Yod of Yod becomes the Yod of He. It is for
this reason that the primary or cosmic creation ter-
minates in the rest of the Seventh Day, for it can
proceed no further until a fresh starting-point is
found. But when this fresh starting-point is found
in Man realizing his relation to the " Father," we
start a new series and strike the Creative Octave
and therefore the Resurrection takes place, not on
the Sabbath or Seventh Day, but on the Eighth day
which then becomes the First day of the new crea'
tive week. The principle of the Resurrection is the
realization by man of his individualization of the
Spirit and his recognition of the fact that, since the
Spirit is always the same Spirit, it becomes the
Alpha of a new creation from his own centre of
being.
Now all this is necessarily an interior process
taking place on the mental plane; but if we realize
that the creative process is always primarily one of
involution, or formation in the spiritual world, we
shall grasp something of the meaning of Christ as
" The Son of God " — ^the concentration of the
Universal Spirit into a Personality on the spiritual
plane correlatively to the individuality of each one
who affords the necessary thought-conditions. To
all who apprehend it there is then discovered in the
166 The Dare Lechires.
Universal Spirit the presence of a Divine Individu*
ality reciprocal to that of the individual man, the
rec<^[nition of which is the practical solution of all
metaphysical problems regarding the emanation of
the individual soul from the Universal Spirit and
the relations arising therefrom; for it takes these
matters out of the region of intellectual speculation,
which is never creative but only analytical, and
transfers it to the region of feeling and spiritual
sensation which is the abode of the creative forces.
This personal recognition of the Divine then af-
fords us a new basis of Affirmation, and we need no
longer trouble to go further back in order to an-
alyze it, because we know experimentally that it
is there; so now we find the starting-point of the
new creation ready-made for us according to the
architypal pattern in the Divine Mind itself and
therefore perfectly correctly formed. When once
this truth is clearly apprehended, whether we reach
it by an intellectual process or by simple intuition,
we can make it our starting-point and claim to have
our thought permeated by the creative power of
the Spirit on this basis.
But vast as is the conception thus reached we
must remember that it is still a starting-point. It,
indeed, transcends our previous range of ideas and
so presents a culmination of the cosmic creative
series which passes beyond that series and thus
Christ the FuUUling of thi Law. 6g
brings us to number Eight or the Octave; but on
this very account it is the number One of a new
creative series which is personal to the individual.
Then, because the Spirit is always the same, we
may look for a repetition of the creative process at
a higher level, and, as we all know, that process
consists first of the involution of Spirit into Sub-
stance, and consequently of the subsequent evolu-
tion of Substance into forms continually increasing
in fitness as vehicles for Spirit: so now we may look
for a repetition of this universal process from its
new starting-point in the individual mind and ex-
pect a corresponding extemalization in accordance
with our familiar axiom that thoughts are things.
Now it is as such an external manifestation of the
Divine ideal that the Christ of the Gospels is set
before us. I do not wish to dogmatize, but I will
only say that the more clearly we realize the nature
of the creative process on the spiritual side the
more the current objections to the Gospel narrative
lose their force; and it appears to me that to deny
that narrative as a point-blank impossibility is to
make a similar affirmation with regard to the power
of the Spirit in ourselves. You cannot affirm a
principle and deny it in the same breath; and if we
affirm the externalizing power of the Spirit in our
own case, I do not see how we can logically lay
down a limit for its action and say that under highly
70 The Dori Lectures.
specialized conditions it could not produce highly
specialized effects. It is for this reason that St.
John puts the question of Christ manifest in the
flesh as the criterion of the whole matter (I. John
iv., 2). If the Spirit can create at all then you cannot
logically limit the extent or method of its working;
and since the basis of our expectation of individual
expansion is the limitless creative power of the
Spirit, to reject the Christ of the Gospels as an im-
possibility is to cut away the ground from under our
own feet. It is one thing to say " I do not under-
stand why the Spirit should have worked in that
way " — ^that is merely an honest statement of our
present stage of knowledge, or we may even go the
length of saying that we do not feel convinced that
it did work in that way — ^that is a true confession
of our intellectual difficulty — ^but certainly those
who are professedly relying on the power of the
Spirit to produce external results cannot say that
it does not possess that power, or possesses it only
in a limited degree: the position is logically self-de-
structive. What we should do therefore, is to sus-
pend judgment and follow the light as far as we can
see it, and bye-and-bye it will become clearer to us.
There are, it appears to me, occult heights in the
doctrine of Christ designed by the Supreme Wis-
dom to counteract corresponding occult depths in
the Mystery of Darkness. I do not think it is at
Christ the FuKUing of the Law. 71
all necessary, or even possible, for us to scale these
heights or fathom those depths, with our present in-
fantile intelligence, but if we realize how completely
the law of our being receives its fulfilment in Christ
as far as we know that law, may we not well conceive
that there are yet deeper phases of that law the
existence of which we can only faintly surmise by
intuition? Occasionally just the fringe of the veil
is lifted for some of us, but that momentary glance
is enough to show us that there are powers and
mysteries beyond our present conception. But
even there Law reigns supreme, and therefore taking
Christ as our basis and starting-point, we start with
the Law already fulfilled, whether in those things
which are familiar to us or in those realms which
are beyond our thought, and so we need have no
fear of evil. Our starting-point is that of a divinely
ordained security from which we may quietly grow
into that higher evolution which is the fulfilment of
the law of our own being.
THE STORY OF EDEN.
The whole Bible and the whole history of the
world, past, present and future, are contained in
embryo in the story of Eden, for they are nothing
else than the continuous unfolding of certain great
principles which are there allegorically stated.
That this is by no means a new notion is shown by
the following quotation from Origen : — " Who is
there so foolish and without common-sense as to
believe that God planted trees in the Garden of
Eden like a husbandman; and planted therein the
tree of life perceptible to the eyes and to the
senses, which gave life to the eater; and another
tree which gave to the eater a knowledge of good
and evil? I believe that everybody must regard
these as figures under which a recondite sense is
concealed." Let us, then, follow up the suggestion
of this early Father of the Church, and enquire
what may be the " recondite sense " concealed
under this figure of the two trees. On the face of
Ae story there are two roots, one of Life and the
other of Death, two fundamental principles bring-
ing about diametrically opposite results. The dis-
12
The Story of Eden. 73
tinctive mark of the latter is that it is the knowledge
of good and evil, that is to say, the recognition of
two antagonistic principles, and so requiring a
knowledge of the relations between them to enable
us to continually make the needful adjustments to
keep ourselves going. Now, in appearance this is
exceedingly specious. It looks so entirely reason-
able that we do not see its ultimate destructiveness;
and so we are told that Eve ate the fruit because
she " saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes."
But careful consideration will show us in what the
destructive nature of this principle consists. It is
based on the fallacy that good is limited by evil,
and that you cannot receive any good except
through eliminating the corresponding evil by real-
izing it and beating it back. In this view life be-
comes a continual combat against every imaginable
form of evil, and after we have racked our brains
to devise precautions against all possible evil hap-
penings, there remains the chance, and much more
than the chance, that we have by no means ex-
hausted the category of negative possibilities, and
that others may arise which no amount of foresight
on our part could have imagined. The more we
see into this position the more intolerable it be-
comes, because from this stand-point we can never
attain any certain basis of action, and the forces of
possible evil multiply as we contemplate them. To
74 The Dori Lectures.
set forth to out-wit all evil by our own knowledge
of its nature is to attempt a task the hopelessness
of which becomes apparent when we see it in its
true light.
The mistake is in supposing that Life can be
generated in ourselves by an intellectual process;
but, as we have seen in the preceding lectures, Life
is the primary movement of the Spirit, whether in
the cosmos or in the individual. In its proper order
intellectual knowledge is exceedingly important and
useful, but its place in the order of the whole is
not that of the Originator. It is not Life in itself,
but is a function of life; it is an effect and not the
cause. The reason why this is so is because intel-
lectual study is always the study of the various
laws which arise from the different relations of
things to one another; and it therefore presupposes
that these things together with their laws are al-
ready in existence. Consequently it does not start
from the truly creative stand-point, that of creating
something entirely new, creation ex nihilo as dis-
tinguished from construction, or the laying-together
of existing materials, which is what the word liter-
ally meanis. To recognize evil as a force to be
reckoned with is therefore to give up the creative
stand-point altogether. It is to quit the plane of
First Cause and descend into the realm of second-
ary causation and lose ourselves amid the confusion
The Story of Eden. 75
of a multiplicity of relative causes and effects with-
out grasping any unifying principle behind them.
Now the only thing that can release us from the
inextricable confusion of an infinite multiplicity is
the realization of an underlying unity, and at the
back of all things we find the presence of one Great
Affirmative principle without which nothing could
have existence. This, then, is the Root of Life;
and if we credit it with being able, not only to
supply the power, but also the form for its manifes-
tation we shall see that we need not go beyond this
single Power for the production of anything. It is
Spirit producing Substance out of its own essence,
and the Substance taking Form in accordance with
the movement of the Spirit. What we have to
realize is, not only that this is the way in which the
cosmos is brought into existence, but also that, be-
cause the Spirit finds a new centre in ourselves,
the same process is repeated in our own mentality,
and therefore we are continually creating ex nihUo
whether we know it or not. Consequently, if we
look upon evil as a force to be reckoned with, and
therefore requiring to be studied, we are in effect
creating it; while on the other hand if we realize
that there is only one force to be considered, and
that absolutely good, we are by the law of the crea-
tive process bringing that good into manifestation.
No doubt for this affirmative use of our creative
7^ The Dori Lectures.
power it is necessary that we start from the basic
conception of a single originating power which is
absolutely good and life-giving; but if there were
a self-originating power which was destructive then
no creation could ever have come into existence at
all, for the positive and negative self-originating
powers would cancel each other and the result
would be zero. The fact, therefore, of our own
existence is a sufficient proof of the singleness and
goodness of the Originating Power, and from this
starting-point there is no second power to be taken
into consideration, and consequently we do not
have to study the evil that may arise out of exist-
ing or future circumstances, but require to keep
our minds fixed only upon the good which we intend
to create. There is a very simple reason for this.
It is that every new creation necessarily carries its
own law with it and by that law produces new con-
ditions of its own. A balloon affords a familiar
illustration of my meaning. The balloon with its
freight weighs several hundredweight, yet the intro-
duction of a new factor, the gas J^rings with it a law
of its own which entirely alters the conditions, and
the force of gravity is so completely overcome that
the whole mass rises into the air. The Law itself
is never altered, but we have previously known it
only under limiting conditions. These conditions,
however, are no part of the Law itself; and a clearer
The Story of Eden. 77
realization of the Law shows us that it contains in
itself the power of transcending them. The law
which every new creation carries with it is therefore
not a contradiction of the old law but its special-
ization into a higher mode of action.
Now the ultimate Law is that of production ex
nihilo by the movement of the Spirit within itself,
and all subordinate laws are merely the measure-
ments of the relations which spontaneously arise
between different things when they are brought into
manifestation, and therefore, if an entirely new
thing is created it must necessarily establish en-
tirely new relations and so produce entirely new
laws. This is the reason why, if we take the action
of pure unmanifested Spirit as our starting-point,
we may confidently trust it to produce manifesta-
tions of law which, though perfectly new from the
stand-point of our past experience, are quite as
natural in their own way as any that have gone
before. It is on this account that in these ad-
dresses I lay so much stress on the fact that Spirit
creates ex nihilo, ihat is, out of no pre-existing
forms, but simply by its own movement within it-
self. If, then, this idea is clearly grasped, it logi-
cally follows from it that the Root of Life is not
to be found in the comparison of good and evil,
but in the simple affirmation of the Spirit as the
All-creating power of Good. And since, as we have
78 The Dorl Lectures.
already seen, this same all-creating Spirit finds a
centre and fresh starting-point of operation in our
own minds, we can trust it to follow the Law of its
own being there as much as in the creation of the
cosmos.
Only we must not forget that it is working
through our own minds. It thinks through our
mind, and our mind must be made a suitable chan-
nel for this mode of its operation by conforming it-
self to the broad generic lines of the Spirit's
thinking. The reason for this is one which I have
sought to impress throughout these lectures, name-
ly, that the specialization of a law is never the
denial of it, but on the contrary the fuller recogni-
tion of its basic principles; and if this is the case in
ordinary physical science it must be equally so when
we come to specialize the great Law of Life itself.
The Spirit can never change its essential nature as
the essence of Life, Love, and Beauty; and if we
adopt these characteristics, which constitute the
Law of the Spirit, as the basis of our own thinking,
and reject all that is contrary to them, then we
afford the broad generic conditions for the special*-
ized thinking of the Spirit through our own minds:
and the thinking of the Spirit is that involution^ or
passing of spirit into form, which is the whole be-
ing of the creative process.
The mind which is all the time being thus formed
7
The Story of Eden. 79
is our own. It is not a case of control by an
external individuality, but the fuller expression of
the Universal through an organized mentality which
has all along been a less perfect expression of the
Universal; and therefore the process is one of
growth. We are not losing our individuality, but
are coming into fuller possession of ourselves by the
conscious recognition of our personal share in the
great work of creation. We begin in some slight
measure to understand what the Bible means when
it speaks of our being "partakers of the Divine
nature " (II. Peter i. 4) and we realize the signifi-
cance of the " unity of the Spirit " (Ephesians iv.
3). Doubtless this will imply changes in our old
mode of thinking; but these changes are not forced
upon us, they are brought about naturally by the
new stand-point from which we now see things. Al-
most imperceptibly to ourselves we grow into a
New Order of Thought which proceeds, not from
a knowledge of good and evil, but from the Prin^
ciple of Life itself. That is what makes the differ-
ence between our old thought and our new
thought. Our old thought was based upon a com-
parison of limited facts: our new thought is based
upon a comprehension of principles. The differ-
ence is like that between the mathematics of the
infant, who cannot count beyond the number of
apples or marbles put before him, and that of the
8o The Dore Lectures.
senior wrangler who is not dependent upon visible
objects for his calculations, but plunges boldly into
the unknown because he knows that he is working
by indubitable principles. In like manner when we
realize the infallible Principle of the Creative Law
we no longer find we need to see everything cut
and dried beforehand, for if so, we could never get
beyond the range of our old experiences; but we
can move steadily forward because we know the
certainty of the creative principle by which we are
working, or rather, which is working through us,
and that our life, in all its minutest details, is its
harmonious expression. Thus the Spirit thinks
through our thought only its thought is greater
than ours. It is the paradox of the less containing
the greater. Our thought will not be objectless or
unintelligible to ourselves. It will be quite clear
as far as it goes. We shall know exactly what we
want to do and why we want to do it, and so will
act in a reasonable and intelligent manner. But
what we do not know is the greater thought that
is all the time giving rise to our smaller thought,
and which will open out from it as our lesser
thought progresses into form. Then we gradually
see the greater thought which prompted our small-
er one and we find ourselves working along its
lines, guided by the invisible hand of the Creative
Spirit into continually increasing degrees of living-
The Story of Eden. 8i
ness to which we need assign no limits, for it is the
expansion of the Infinite within ourselves.
This, as it appears to me, is the hidden meaning
of the two trees in Eden, the Garden of the Soul.
It is the distinction between a knowledge which is
merely that of comparisons between different sorts
of conditions, and a knowledge which is that of the
Life which gives rise to and therefore controls
conditions. Only we must remember that the con-
trol of conditions is not to be attained by violent
self-assertion which is only recognizing them as
substantive entities to be battled with, but by con-
scious unity with that All-creating Spirit which
works silently, but surely, on its own lines of Life,
Love, and Beauty.
" Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,
saith the Lord of Hosts."
THE WORSHIP OF ISHL
In Hosea li. i6 we find this remarkable state-
ment: — " And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord,
that thou shalt call Me Ishi, and shalt no more call
Me Baali "; and with this we may couple the state-
ment in Isaiah Ixii. 4: — " Thou shalt be called
Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord de-
Hghteth in thee, and thy land shall be married/'
In both these passages we find a change of
name; and since a name stands for something which
corresponds to it, and in truth only amounts to a
succinct description, the fact indicated in these texts
is a change of condition answering to the change
of name.
Now the change from Baali to Ishi indicates an
important alteration in the relation between the
Divine Being and the worshipper; but since the
Divine Being cannot change, the altered relation
must result from a change in the stand-point of
the worshipper: and this can only come from a new
mode of looking at the Divine, that is, from a new
order of thought regarding it. Baali means Lord,
and Ishi means husband, and so the change in re-
lation is that of a female slave who is liberated and
married to her former master. We could not have
8a
The Worship of Ishi. 83
a more perfect analogy. Relatively to the Univer-
sal Spirit the individual soul is esoterically feminine,
as I have pointed out in " Bible Mystery and Bible
Meaning," because its function is that of the recep-
tive and formative. This is necessarily inherent in
the nature of the creative process. But the indi-
vidual's development as the specializing medium of
the Universal Spirit will depend entirely upon his
own conception of his relation tq it. So long as he
only regards it as an arbitrary power, a sort of
slave owner, he will find himself in the position of
a slave driven by an inscrutable force, he knows not
whither or for what purpose. He may worship
such a God, but his worship is only the worship
of fear and ignorance, and there is no personal in-
terest in the matter except to escape some dreaded
punishment. Such a worshipper would gladly escape
from his divinity, and his worship, when analyzed,
will be found to be little else than disguised hatred.
This is the natural result of a worship based upon
unexplained traditions instead of intelligible prin-
ciples, and is the very opposite of that worship in
Spirit and in truth which Jesus speaks of as the
true worship.
But when the light begins to break in upon us,
all this becomes changed. We see that a system of
terrorism cannot give expression to the Divine
Spirit, and we realize the truth of St. Paul's words.
84 The Dori Lectures.
" He hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of
power, and of love, and of a sound mind." As the
true nature of the relation between the individual
mind and the Universal Mind becomes clearer, we
find it to be one of mutual action and re-action, a
perfect reciprocity which cannot be better symbol-
ized than by the relation between an affectionate
husband and wife. Everything is done from love
and nothing from compulsion, there is perfect con-
fidence on both sides, and both are equally indis-
pensable to each other. It is simply the carrying
out of the fundamental maxim that the Universal
cannot act on the plane of the Particular except
through the Particular; only this philosophical
axiom develops into a warm living intercourse.
Now this is the position of the soul which is in-
dicated by the name Hephzibah. In common with
all other words derived from the Semitic root
'* hafz *' it implies the idea of guarding, just as in
the East a hafiz is one who guards the letter of the
Koran by having the whole book by heart, and in
many similar expressions. Hephzibah may there-
fore be translated as " a guarded one," thus recalling
the New Testament description of those who are
" guarded into salvation." It is precisely this con-
ception of being guarded by a superior power that
distinguishes the worship of Ishi from that of Baali.
A special relation has been established between the
Divine Spirit and the individual soul, one of abso-
The Worship of Ishi. 85
lute confidence and personal intercourse. This
does not require any departure from the general
law of the universe, but is due to that specializing
of the law through the presentation of special con-
ditions personal to the individual, of which I have
spoken before. But all the time there has been no
change in the Universal Spirit, the only change has
been in the mental attitude of the individual — ^he
has come into a new thought, a clearer perception
of God. He has faced the questions, What is God?
Where is God? How does God work? and he has
found the answer in the apostolic statement that
God is " over all, through all, and in all," and he
realises that " God " is the root of his (the indi-
vidual's) own being, ever present in him, ever
working through him, and universally present around
him.
This realization of the true relation between the
Originating Spirit and the individual mind is what
is esoterically spoken of as the Mystical Marriage
in which the two have ceased to be separate and
have become one. As a matter of fact they always
were one, but since we can apprehend things only
from the stand-point of our own consciousness, it is
our recognition of the fact that makes it a practical
reality for ourselves. But an intelligent recognition
will never make a confusion of the two parts of
which the whole consists, and will never lead the
individual to suppose that he is handling a blind
86 The Dori Lectures.
force or that a blind force is handling him. He will
neither dethrone God, nor lose himself by absorption
in deity, but he will recognize the reciprocity of the
Divine and the human as the natural and logical
outcome of the essential conditions of the creative
process.
And what is the Whole which is thus created?
It is our conscious personality ; and therefore what-
ever we draw from the Universal Spirit acquires in
us the quality of personality. It is that process of
diflferentiation of the universal into the particular of
which I have so often spoken, which, by a rude
analogy, we may compare to the differentiation of
the universal electric fluid into specific sorts of
power by its passage through suitable apparatus.
It is for this reason that relatively to ourselves the
Universal Spirit must necessarily assume a personal
aspect, and that the aspect which it will assume will
be in exact correspondence with our own conception
of it. This is in accordance with mental and
spiritual laws inherent in our own being, and it is
on this account that the Bible seeks to build up our
conception of God on such lines as will set us free
from all fear of evil, and thus leave us at liberty to
use the creative power of our thought affirmatively
from the stand-point of a calm and untroubled
mind. This stand-point can only be reached by
passing beyond the range of the happenings of the
moment, and this can only be done by the discovery
The Worship of Ishi. 87
of our immediate relation to the undifferentiated
source of all good. I lay stress on these words
*' immediate " and " undifferentiated " because in
them is contained the secret of the whole position.
If we could not draw immediately from the Uni-
versal Spirit our receiving would be subject to the
limitations of the channel through which it reached
us; and if the force which we receive were not
undifferentiated in itself it could not take appro-
priate form in our own minds and become to each
of us just what we require it to be. It is this
power of the human soul to differentiate limitlessly
from the Infinite that we are apt to overlook, but
as we come to realize that the soul is itself a reflec-
tion and image of the Infinite Spirit — and a clear
recognition of the cosmic creative process shows
that it cannot be anything else — ^we find that it
must possess this power, and that in fact it is our
possession of this power which is the whole raison
d'etre of the creative process: if the human soul did
not possess an unlimited power of differentiation
from the Infinite, then the Infinite would not be
reflected in it, and consequently the Infinite Spirit
would find no outlet for its conscious recognition of
itself as the Life, Love, and Beauty which it is.
We can never too deeply ponder the old esoteric
definition of Spirit as " the Power which knows it-
self " : the secret of all things, past, present, and
future is contained in these few words. The self-
88 The Dori Lectures.
recognition or self-contemplation of Spirit is the
primary movement out of which all creation pro-
ceeds, and the attainment in the individual of a
fresh centre for self-recognition is what the Spirit
gains in the process — this gain accruing to the
Spirit is what is referred to in the parables where
the lord is represented as receiving increase from
his servants.
When the individual perceives this relation be-
tween himself and Infinite Spirit, he finds that he
has been raised from a position of slavery to one of
reciprocity. The Spirit cannot do without him any
more than he can do without the Spirit : the two
are as necessary to each other as the two poles of
an electric battery. The Spirit is the unlimited
essence of Love, Wisdom, and Power, all three in
one undifferentiated and waiting to be differentiated
by appropriation, that is, by the individual claiming
to be the channel of their differentiation. It only
requires the claim to be made with the recognition
that by the Law of Being it is bound to be an-
swered, and the right feeling, the right seeing, and
the right working for the particular matter we have
in hand will flow in quite naturally. Our old
enemies, doubt and fear, may seek to bring us back
under bondage to Baali, but our new stand-point
for the recognition of the All-originating Spirit as
being absolutely unified with ourselves must always
The Worship of Ishi. 89
be kept resolutely in mind; for, short of this, we
are not working on the creative level — ^we are
creating, indeed, for we can never divest ourselves
of our creative power, but we are creating in the
image of the old limiting and destructive condi-
tions, and this is merely perpetuating the cosmic
Law of Averages, which is just what the individual
has to rise superior to. The creative level is
where new laws begin to manifest themselves in a
new order of conditions, something transcending
our past experiences and thus bringing about a
real advance; for it is no advance only to go on in
the same old round even if we kept at it for cen-
turies: it is the steady go-ahead nature of the
Spirit that has made the world of to-day an im-
provement upon the world of the pterodactyl and
the icthiosaurus, and we must look for the same
forward movement of the Spirit from its new start-
ing-point in ourselves.
Now it is this special, personal, and individual
relation of the Spirit to ourselves which is typified
by the names Ishi and Hephzibah. From this
stand-point we may say that as the individual wakes
up to the oneness with the Spirit, the Spirit wakes
up to the same thing. It becomes conscious of
itself through the consciousness of the individual,
and thus is solved the paradox of individual self-
recognition by the Universal Spirit, without which
90 The Dori Lectures.
no n^w-creative power could be exercised and all
things would continue to proceed in the old merely
cosmic order. It is of course true that in the
merely generic order the Spirit must be present in
every form of Life, as the Master pointed out when
He said that not a sparrow falls to the ground
without " the Father." But as the sparrows He al-
luded to had been shot and were on sale at a price
which shows that this was the fate of a good many
of them, we see here precisely that stage of mani-
festation where the Spirit has not woke up to indi-
vidual self-recognition, and remains at the lower
level of self-recognition, that of the generic or race-
spirit. The Master's comment, " Ye are of more
value than many sparrows " points out this differ-
ence : in us the generic creation has reached the
level which affords the conditions for the waking up
of the Spirit to self-recognition in the Individual.
And we must bear in mind that all this is per-
fectly natural. There is no posing or straining after
effect about it. If you have to pump up the Life,
who is going to put the Life into you to pump it.^
Therefore it is spontaneous or nothing. That is
why the Bible speaks of it as the free gift of God.
It cannot be anything else. You cannot originate
the originating force; it must originate you : but
what you can do is to distribute it. Therefore im-
mediately you experience any sense of friction be
The Warship of Ishi. 91
sure there is something wrong somewhere; and
since God can never change, you may be sure that
the friction is being caused by some error in your
own thinking — ^you are limiting the Spirit in some
way : set to work to find out what it is. It is al-
ways limiting the Spirit that does this. You are ty-
ing it down to conditions somewhere, saying it is
bound by reason of some existing forms. The
remedy is to go back to the original starting point
of the Cosmic Creation and ask, Where were the
pre-existing forms that dictated to the Spirit then?
Then because the Spirit never changes it is still the
same, and is just as independent of existing con-
ditions now as it was in the beginning; and so we
must pass over all existing conditions, however ap-
parently adverse, and go straight to the Spirit as the
originator of new forms and new conditions. This
is real New Thougfht, for it does not trouble abo ut-^
the old thingSy but is going straight ahead from
where we are now. When we do this, just trusting
1 the Spirit, and not laying down the particular details
of its action — ^just telling it what we want without
dictating how we are to get it — ^we shall find that
things will open out more and more clearly day by
day both on the inner and the outer plane. Re-
member that the Spirit is alive and working here
and now, for if ever the Spirit is to get from the
past into the future it must be by passing through
g2 The Dori Lectures*
the present; therefore what you have to do is to
acquire the habit of living direct from the Spirit
here and now. You will soon find that this is a
matter of personal intercourse, perfectly natural and
not requiring any abnormal conditions for its pro-
duction. You just treat the Spirit as you would
any other kind-hearted sensible person, remember-
ing that it is always there — ^" closer than hands and
feet," as Tennyson says — and you will gradually
begin to appreciate its reciprocity as a very prac-
tical fact indeed.
This is the relation of Hephzibah to Ishi, and is
that worship in Spirit and in truth which needs
neither the temple in Jerusalem nor yet in Samaria
for its acceptance, for the whole world is the temple
of the Spirit and you yourself its sanctuary. Bear
this in mind, and remember that nothing is too
great or too small, too interior or too external, for
the Spirit's recognition and operation, for the Spirit
is itself both the Life and the Substance of all things
and it is also Self-recognition from the stand-point
of your own individuality; and therefore, because
the Self-recognition of Spirit is the Life of the
creative process, you will, by simply trusting the
Spirit to work according to its own nature, pass
more and more completely into that New Order
which proceeds from the thought of Him who says,
" Behold I make all things new."
THE SHEPHERD AND THE STONE.
The metaphor of the Shepherd and the Sheep is
of constant occurrence throughout the Bible and
naturally suggests the idea of the guiding, guard-
ing, and feeding both of the individual sheep and of
the whole flock and it is not difficult to see the spir-
itual correspondence of these things in a general
sort of way. But we find that the Bible combines
the metaphor of the Shepherd with another meta-
phor that of " the Stone/' and at first sight the two
seem rather incongruous.
" From thence is the Shepherd the Stone of
Israel," says the Old Testament (Genesis xlix. 24),
and Jesus calls himself both " The Good Shepherd "
and " The Stone which the builders rejected." The
Shepherd and the Stone are thus identified and we
must therefore seek the interpretation in some con-
ception which combines the two. A shepherd sug-
gests Personal care for the welfare of the sheep, and
an intelligence greater than theirs. A stone sug-
gests the idea of Building, and consequently of
measurement, adaptation of parts to whole, and
progressive construction according to plan. Com-
93
94 The Dori Lectures.
bining these two conceptions we get the idea of the
building of an edifice whose stones are persons, each
taking their more or less conscious part in the
construction — ^thus a building, not constructed from
without, but self-forming by a principle of growth
from within under the guidance of a Supreme Wis-
dom permeating the whole and conducting it stage
by stage to ultimate completeness. This points to
a Divine Order in human affairs with which we
may more or less consciously co-operate: both to
our personal advantage and also to the further-
ance of the great scheme of human evolution as a
whole; the ultimate purpose being to establish in all
men that principle of " The Octave " to which I
have already alluded; and in proportion as some
adumbration of this principle is realized by individu-
als and by groups of individuals they specialize
the law of race-development, even though they may
not be aware of the fact, and so come under a spe-
cialized working of the fundamental Law, which
thus differentiates them from other individuals and
nationalities, as by a peculiar guidance, producing
higher developments which the merely generic op-
eration of the Law could not.
Now if we keep steadily in mind that, though the
purpose, or Law of Tendency, or the Originating
Spirit must always be universal in its nature, it must
necessarily be individual in its operation^ we shall
The Shepherd and the Stone. g$
see that this universal purpose can only be accom-
plished through the instrumentality of specific
means. This results from the fundamental propo-
sition that the Universal can only work on the
plane of the Particular by becoming the individual
and particular; and when we grasp the conception
that the merely generic operation of the Creative
Law has now brought the human race as far as it
can, that is to say it has completely evolved the
merely natural genus homo, it follows that if any
further development is to take place it can only be
by the co-operation of the individual himself. Now
it is the spread of this individual co-operation that
the forward movement of the Spirit is leading us to,
and it is the gradual extension of this universal
principle that is alluded to in the prophecy of Dan-
iel regarding the Stone cut out without hands that
spreads until it fills the whole earth (Daniel ii. 34
and 44). According to the interpretation given by
Daniel, this Stone is the emblem of a spiritual
Kingdom, and the identity of the Stone and the
Shepherd indicates that the Kingdom of the Stone
must be also the Kingdom of the Shepherd; and
the Master, who identified himself with both the
Stone and the Shepherd, emphatically declared that
this Kingdom was, in its essence, an interior King-
dom — " the Kingdom of Heaven is within you."
We must look for its foundation therefore, in a
96 The DorS Lectures.
spiritual principle or mental law inherent in the
constitution of all men but waiting to be brought
into fuller development by more accurate compli-
ance with its essential requirements; which is pre-
cisely the method by which science has evoked
powers from the laws of nature which were un-
dreamt of in former ages; and in like manner the
recognition of our true relation to the Universal
Spirit, which is the source of all individual being,
must lead to an advance both for the race and for
the individual such as we can at present scarcely
form the faintest idea of, but which we dimly appre-
hend through the intuition and speak of as the New
Order. The approach of this New Order is every-
where making itself vaguely felt; it is, as the French
say, in the air, and the very vagueness and mystery
attending it is causing a feeling of unrest as to what
form it may assume. But to the student of Spirit-
ual Law this should not be the case. He knows
that the Form is always the expression of the Spirit,
and therefore, since he is in touch with the forward
movement of the Spirit, he knows that he himself
will always be harmoniously included in any form of
development which the Great Forward Movement
may take. This is the practical and personal ben-
efit arising from the realization of the Principle
which is symbolized under the two-fold metaphor
of the Shepherd and the Stone, and in all those new
The Shepherd and the Stone. gf
developments which are perhaps even now within
measurable distance, we can rest ^n the knowledge
that we are under the care of a kind Shepherd, and
under the formation of a wise Master Builder.
But the principle of the Shepherd and the Stone
is not something hitherto unheard of which is only
to come into existence in the future. If there were
no manifestations of this principle in the past, we
might question whether there were any such
principle at all; but a careful study of the subject
will show us that it has been at work all through
the ages, sometimes in modes more immediately
bearing the aspect of the Shepherd, and sometimes
in modes more immediately bearing the aspect of
the Stone, though the one always implies the other,
for they are the same thing seen from different
points of view. The subject is one of immense in-
terest, but covering such a wide range of study that
all I can do here is to point out that such a field of
investigation exists and is worth exploration; and
the exploration brings its reward with it, not only
by putting us in possession of the key to the his-
tory of the past, but by showing us that it is the
key to the history of the future also, and further-
more by making evident on a large scale the work-
ing of the same principle of Spiritual Law by co-
operation with which we may facilitate the process
of our own individual evolution. It thus adds a
98 The Dore Lectures.
vivid interest to life, giving us something worth
looking forward to and introducing us to a personal
future which is not limited by the proverbial three-
score years and ten.
Now, we have seen that the first stage in the
Creative Process is always that of Feeling — ^a reach-
ing-out by the Spirit in a particular direction, and
therefore we may look for something of the same
kind in the development of the great principle
which we are now considering. And we find this
first vague movement of this great principle in the
intuitions of a particular race which appears from
time immemorial to have combined the two char-
acteristics of nomad wandering with their flocks and
herds and the symbolization of their religious be-
liefs in monuments of stone. The monuments
themselves have taken different forms in different
countries and ages, but the identity of their sym*
holism becomes clear under careful investigation.
Together with this symbolism we always find the
nomad character of the builders and that they are
invested with an aura of mystery and romance such
as we find nowhere else, though we always find it
surrounding these builders, even in countries so far
apart as India and Ireland. Then, as we pass be-
yond the merely monumental stage, we find threads
of historical evidence connecting the different
branches of this race, increasing in their complexity
The Shepherd and the Stone. 99
and strengthening in their cumulative force as we
go on, until at last we are brought to the history of
the age in which we live; and finally most remark-
able affinities of language put the finishing touch
to the mass of proofs which can be gathered along
all these different lines. In this magic circle coun-
tries so remote from one another as Ireland and
Greece, Egypt and India, Palestine and Persia, are
brought into close contiguity — a similar tradition,
and even a similar nomenclature, unite the myste-
rious builders of the Great Pyramid with the equally
mysterious builders of the Round Towers of Ire-
land — ^and the Great Pyramid itself, perhaps ante-
dating the call of Abraham, re-appears as the offi-
cial seal of the United States ; while tradition traces
the crowning-stone in Westminster Abbey back to
the time of Solomon's temple and even earlier. For
the most part the erewhile wanderers are now
settled in their destined homes, but the Anglo-
Saxon race — ^the People of the Comer-Stone — ^are
still the pioneers among the nations, and there is
something esoteric in the old joke that when the
North Pole is reached a Scotchman will be found
there. And not least in the chain of evidence is
the link afforded by a tribe who are wanderers still,
the Gipsies with their duplicate of the Pyramid in
the pack of cards — s. volume which has been called
** The Devil's Picture Book " by those who know
loo The Dori Lectures.
it only in its misuse and inversion, but which when
interpreted in the light of the knowledge we are
now gaining, affords a signal instance of that divine
policy by which as St. Paul says, God employs the
foolish things of this world to confute the wise;
while a truer apprehension of the Gipsies them-
selves indicates their unmistakable connection with
that race who through all its wanderings has ever
been the guardian of the Stone.
In these few paragraphs I have only been able to
point out very briefly the broad lines of enquiry
into a subject of national importance to the British
and American peoples, and which interests us per-
sonally, not only as members of these nations, but
as affording proof on the largest scale of the same
specialization of universal laws which each of us
has to effect individually for ourself. But whether
the process be individual or national it is always the
same, and is the translation to the very highest
plane — ^that of the All-originating Life itself— of the
old maxim that " Nature will obey us exactly in
proportion as we first obey Nature"; it is the old
parable of the lord who, finding his servants girt
and awaiting him, then girds himself and serves
them (Luke xii. 35 to 37). The nation or the indi-
vidual who thus realizes the true principle of the
Shepherd and the Stone, comes under a special
Divine guidance and protection, not by a favourit-
The Shepherd and the Stone, loi
ism incompatible with the conception of universal
Law, but by the very operation of the Law itself.
They have come into touch with its higher possi-
bilities, and to recur to an analogy which I have
already employed, they learn to make their iron
float by the very same law by which it sinks; and
so they become the flock of the Great Shepherd and
the building of the Great Architect, and each one,
however insignificant his or her sphere may appear,
becomes a sharer in the great work, and by a logi-
cal consequence begins to grow on new lines of de-
velopment for the simple reason that a new prin-
ciple necessarily produces new modes of manifesta-
tion. If the reader will think over these things he
will see that the promises contained in the Bible,
whether national or personal, are nothing else than
statements of the universal law of Cause and Effect
applied to the inmost principles of our being, and
that therefore it is not mere rhapsody, but the fig-
urative expression of a great truth when the Psalm-
ist says " The Lord is my Shepherd," and " Thou
art my God and the Rock of my salvation."
SALVATION IS OF THE JEWS.
What does this saying of the Master's mean?
Certainly not a mere arrogant assumption in favour
of His own nationality — such an idea is negatived,
not only by the universality of all His other teach-
ing, but also by the very instruction in which these
words occur, for He declared that the Jewish temple
was equally with the Samaritan of no account in
the matter. He said that the true worship was
purely spiritual and entirely independent of places
and ceremonies, while at the same time He empha-
sized the Jewish expectation of a Messiah, so that
in this teaching we are met by the paradox of a
universal principle combined with what at first sight
appears like a tribal tradition quite incompatible
with any recognition of the universal reign of law.
How to reconcile these apparent opposites, there-
fore, seems to be the problem which He here sets
before us. Its solution is to be found in that prin-
ciple which I have endeavoured to elucidate
throughout these lectures, the specializing of uni-
versal law. Opinions may differ as to whether the
Bible rarrative of the birth of Christ is to be taken
loa
Salvation is of the Jews. 103
literally or symbolically, but as to the spiritual prin-
ciple involved there can, I think, be no difference
of opinion. It is that of the specialization by the
individual of the generic relation of the soul to the
Infinite Spirit from which it proceeds. The rela-
tion itself is universal and results from the very
nature of the creative process, but the law of the
universal relation admits of particular specialization
exactly in the same way as all other natural laws —
it is simpy applying to the supreme Law of Life the
same method by which we have learnt to make iron
float, that is to say by a fuller recognition of what
the Law is in itself. Whatever other meanings we
may apply to the name Messiah, it undoubtedly
stands for the absolutely perfect manifestation in
the individual of all the infinite possibilities of the
Principle of Life.
Now it was because this grand ideal is the basis
on which the Hebrew nationality was founded that
Jesus made this statement. This foundation had
been lamentably misconceived by the Jewish people;
but nevertheless, however imperfectly, they still
held by it, and from them this ideal has spread
throughout the Christian world. Here also it con-
tinues to be lamentably misconceived, nevertheless
it is still retained, and only needs to be recognized
in its true light as a universal principle, instead of
an unintelligible dogma, to become the salvation of
I04 The DorS Lectures.
the world. Hence, as affording the medium
through which this supreme ideal has been preserved
and spread, it is true that " Salvation is of the
Jews/'
Their fundamental idea was right but their appre-
hension of it was wrong — ^that is why the Master at
the same time sweeps away the national worship of
the temple and preserves the national idea of the
Messiah; and this is equally true of the Christian
world at the present day. If salvation is anything
real it must have its cause in some law, and if there
is a law it must be founded upon some universal
principle: therefore it is this principle which we
must seek if we would understand this teaching of
the Master's.
Now whether we take the Bible story of the birth
of Christ literally or symbolically, it teaches one
great lesson. It teaches that the All-originating
Spirit is the true Parent of the individual both in
soul and body. This is nothing else than realizing
from the stand-point of the individual what we can-
not help realizing in regard to the original crea-
tion of the cosmos — it is the realization that the
All-originating Spirit is at once the Life and the
Substance in each individual here and now, just as
it must have been in the origin of all things.
Human parentage counts for nothing — ^it is only
the channel through which Universal Spirit has
Salvation is of the lews. 105
acted for the concentration of an individual centre;
but the ultimate cause of that centre, both in life
and substance, continues at every moment to be
the One same Originating Spirit.
This recognition cuts away the root of all the
power of the negative, and so in principle it delivers
us from all evil, for the root of evil is the denial of
the power of the Spirit to produce good. When we
realize that the Spirit is finding its own individuali-
zation in us in its two-fold essence as Life and
Substance, then we see that it must be both able
and willing to create for us all good. The only
limit is that which we ourselves impose by denying
its operation, and when we realize the inherent
creativeness of Spirit we find that there is no reason
why we should stop short at any point and say that
it can go no further. Our error is in looking on the
life of the body as separate from the life of the
Spirit, and this error is met by the consideration
that, in its ultimate nature. Substance must emanate
from Spirit and is nothing else than the record of
Spirit's conception of itself as finding expression in
space and time. And when this becomes clear it
follows that Substance need not be taken into cal-
culation at all. The material form stands in the|
same relation to Spirit that the image projected on
the screen stands to the slide in the lantern. If we
wish to change the exhibited subject we do not
io6 The Dore Lectures.
' manipulate the reflection on the screen, but we alter
the slide; and in like manner, when we come to
realize the true nature of the creative process, we
learn that the exterior things are to be changed by
a change of the interior spiritual attitude. Our
spiritual attitude will always be determined by our
conception of our relation to God or Infinite Spirit;
and so when we begin to see that this relation is
one of absolute reciprocity — ^that it is the self-rec-
ognition of Infinite Spirit from our own centre of
consciousness — ^then we find that the whole Secret
of Life consists in simple reliance upon the All-
creating Spirit as consciously identifying itself with
us. It has, so to say, awakened to a new mode of
self-recognition peculiar to ourselves, in which we
individually form the centre of its creative energy.
To realize this is to specialize the Principle of Life.
The logic of it is simple. We have found that the
originating movement of Spirit from which all cre-
ation proceeds can only be Self-contemplation.
Then, since the Original Spirit cannot change its
nature its self-contemplation through our own
minds must be as creative in, for, and through us
as it ever was in the beginning; and consequently
we find the original creative process repeated in
ourselves and directed by the conscious thought
of our own minds.
In all this there is no place for the consideration
Salvation is of the Jews. 107
of outward conditions, whether of body or circum-
stances; for they are only effects and not the cause;
and therefore when we reach this stand-point we
cease to take them into our calculations. Instead
we employ the method of self-contemplation,
knowing that this is the creative method, and so we
contemplate ourselves as allied to the infinite Love
and Wisdom of the Divine Spirit which will take
form through our conscious thought, and so act
creatively as a Special Providence entirely devoted
to guarding, guiding, providing for, and illuminat-
ing us. The whole thing is perfectly natural when
seen from a clear recognition of what the creative
working of Spirit must be in itself; and when it is
realized in this perfectly natural manner all strain
and effort to compel its action ceases — ^we are at
one with the All-creating Power which has now
found a new centre in ourselves from which to
continue its creative work to more perfect manifes-
tation than could be attained through the unspe-
cialized generic conditions of the merely cosmic
order.
Now this is what Messiah stands for, and there-
fore it is written that " to them gave He power to
become sons of God, even to as many as believe on
His Name." This " belief " is the recognition of a
universal principle and personal reliance upon it as
a law which cannot be broken; for it is the Law of
io8 The Dori Lectures.
the whole creative process specialized in our own
individuality. Then, too, however great may be
the mystery, the removal and cleansing away of all
sin follows as an essential part of this realization of
new life; and it is in this sense that we may read
all that the Bible tells us on this aspect of the sub-
ject. The principle of it is Love; for when we are
reunited to the Parent Spirit in mutual confidence
and love, what room is there on either side for any
remembrance of our past failures?
This, then,, is what Messiah stands for to the indi-
vidual; but if we can conceive a nation based upon
such a recognition of its special relation to the
Directing Power of the Universe, such a people
must of necessity become the leader of the nations,
and those who oppose it must fail by a self-destruc-
tive principle inherent in the very nature of the
position they take up. The leadership resulting
from such a national self-recognition, will not be
based upon conquest and compulsion, but will come
naturally. Other nations will enquire the reason
for the phenomenal success and prosperity of the
favoured people, and finding this reason in a uni-
versal Law, they will begin to apply the same law
in the same manner, and thus the same results will
spread from country to country until at last the
whole earth will be full of the glory of the Lord.
And such a nation, and rather company of nations.
Salvation is of the Jews. 109
exists. To trace its present development from its
ancient beginnings is far beyond the scope of this
volume, and still more to speculate upon its further
growth; but to my readers on both sides of the
Atlantic I may say that this people is the Anglo*
Saxon race throughout the world. I write these
lines upon the historic Hill of Tara; this will convey
a hint to many of my readers. At some future
time I may enlarge upon this subject ; but at present
my aim is merely to suggest some lines of thought
arising from the Master's saying that '" Salvation is
of the Jews/'
THE BOOKS OF THOMAS TROWARD
A series of books on Mental Science which have won general recogni-
tion as ihe most lucid and scholarly works on ihe subject, and which
have been described by William Jame^ as "Far and away Ihe ablest
siaiemeni of the philosophy that I have met."
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science
Indicates the natural principles governing ihe relation between menial
action and physical conditions, affording the student an intelligent start-
ing point for the practical study of Menial Science.
The Dore Lectures on Mental Science
Puriher lectures on Mental Science, supplementing those in The Edin-
burgh Lectures and suggesting lines of thought which the reader will be
able lo work out for himself.
The Creative Process in the Individual
A study of spiritual evolution which, the author maintains, is but an-
other aspect of physical evolution,
Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
An iimrpretation in fourteen brilliant chapters of Bible truths from the
standpoint of modern metaphysics.
The Law and the Word
The contents include; Some Facts in Nature; Psychic Experiences;
Man's Place in the Creative Order; The Law of Wholeness; Death and
Immorlalily; The Soul of the Subject; The Promises and Transferring
the Burden.
The Hidden Power
Essays on a variety of subjects, including definite studies of portions of
[he Bible, and discussions of Ihe personal and intimate problems of life.
This is the final volume, and is composed of the best material left by
the author al his death.
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY • NEW YORK
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